5G helps digital transformation of smart railways

In recent years, under the guidance of the "Strong Transportation Country" policy, my country's railway infrastructure construction has been accelerated across the country. At present, my country's technical strength in railways, especially in high-speed railways and heavy-haul railways, is at the global leading level. The "Outline of the Priority Planning for Railways in the New Era to Strengthen Transportation" clearly states that "the railway's independent innovation capabilities and the modernization level of the industrial chain will be comprehensively improved, the railway science and technology innovation system will be sound and complete, key core technology equipment will be independently controllable, advanced and applicable, safe and efficient, intelligent high-speed railways will be built first, and smart railways will be realized at an accelerated pace."

With the development of 5G technology, the advantages of 5G such as large bandwidth, low latency and wide connection are fully reflected in the construction and operation of railways. In the construction of the new generation of railway mobile communication systems, emerging technologies such as 5G, big data and the Internet of Things are accelerating their integration, combined with technologies such as edge computing and network slicing, to help China Railway achieve digital transformation and promote the intelligent development of China Railway into a new stage.

Current Status and Future Development Prospects of Railway Communication Network

At present, the railway construction department has built a dedicated network (GSM-R and LTE-R network) for railways through the sub-protocols of GSM or LTE networks drafted by 3GPP, and has achieved good application results. However, with the growth of business, GSM-R can no longer meet the growing demand for railway communications. As the second-generation mobile communication technology, GSM-R is a narrowband communication system that mainly carries voice services and a small amount of data services. It has a low data transmission rate and does not support the transmission of videos and pictures. It is currently difficult to develop new businesses on the existing GSM-R platform. These "deficiencies" have also accelerated the application of 5G in the railway industry. The characteristics of 5G such as large bandwidth, low latency, and wide connection can perfectly solve the above problems. In the 5G era, railway planning at the network level mainly focuses on four aspects. First, timely introduce 5G technology to upgrade the railway private network to form a 5G-R network; second, use satellite networks to create an "air-ground integrated" seamless coverage network to ensure continuous and uninterrupted transmission of key data throughout the transportation process and adequate monitoring of vehicle locations; third, on the basis of the integrated integration of the network provided by basic telecommunications operators (including 5G customized networks) and internal private networks, carry out effective division of labor so that data of different levels of confidentiality are carried on different networks; fourth, introduce advanced network technologies such as quantum communications to ensure the security of railway communications.

Smart Railway Technology Research

The development of smart railways requires the support of three core technologies: Beidou navigation, 5G technology, and autonomous driving. Beidou navigation provides basic support for smart railways, such as precise positioning and autonomous navigation; 5G provides important support for railway networking, vehicle-road collaboration, and human-vehicle communication; and autonomous driving more intuitively promotes the development of intelligent railways. Among them, the technical core points of 5G application in railways can be summarized as follows. First, ultra-high-speed 5G public network service technology, the core scenario is that passengers can get a relatively good network service experience on high-speed trains; second, technical support for indoor ultra-large passenger flow scenarios such as railway stations; third, the construction of a service system for emergency support; fourth, the implementation of 5G customized network scenarios for various stations; fifth, the integrated development of operator 5G customized networks and railway-specific 5G-R networks.

Smart Railway Application Cases

The construction of smart railways is the current key development direction of railway informatization. In recent years, some application cases have emerged, especially smart railway application cases integrated with 5G.

Case 1: 5G Smart Station of Beijing Railway Bureau

Smart stations use new indoor base stations and big data platforms to achieve indoor and outdoor positioning, passenger flow trajectory analysis, ticket data aggregation, real-time monitoring and other functions, which can contribute to passenger flow analysis, emergency management, waiting hall commercial value analysis, and precise advertising. Through the application of indoor cellular networks, big data, artificial intelligence, visualization and other technologies, 5G smart stations can make the operation and management of stations more intelligent and data-based, and use visual images and quantifiable numbers to help stations support operational decisions, information transformation, and passenger flow value conversion. Based on the combination of 5G and terminals, all-round data collection of passenger flow in the station is realized, and functions such as large passenger flow warning and precise marketing support are realized.

The smart station system exchanges data with various business systems in the station through the "5G+MEC" private network. By utilizing the high-bandwidth, low-latency transmission characteristics of the "5G+MEC" private network and combining it with big data, it can improve the quality of passenger service at the station, expand the service scenarios of the station, and gradually reduce the operating costs of the station. In the security inspection process, 5G is used to upload facial recognition data to the AI ​​cloud platform for matching and comparison, so as to achieve "second" entry into the station and improve security inspection efficiency. In addition, security inspection staff can wear AR glasses to achieve infrared body temperature detection and visual fusion command and dispatch. The 5G service robots in the station can also provide passengers with interactive passenger services such as remaining ticket inquiries and optimal route selection; VR entertainment equipment in the station can also provide passengers with entertainment services such as cloud games to meet the diverse entertainment needs of passengers.

Case 2: Xi'an Railway Bureau's locomotive "doctor" based on "5G+AI"

Supervision of drivers: 5G technology is used to dump videos on the platform. When the locomotive slowly enters the train section, the on-board terminal automatically establishes a high-speed channel of more than 1 Gbit/s with the trackside base station, and the maximum dump rate can reach more than 1.5 Gbit/s. Nearly 30GB of data generated by the locomotive when performing a task can be automatically dumped within 3 minutes. The full amount of driver video recording data is transmitted back using 5G technology. After entering the intelligent analysis center through a high-speed cache device, the driver's violations can be automatically identified with the help of AI technology. The solution can also customize the development of video behavior analysis algorithms based on actual scenarios. At present, it has achieved automatic intelligent identification of 11 violations, such as not making gestures, playing with mobile phones, not holding the gate, drowsiness, etc., and regulates their behavior by building an intelligent evaluation model for drivers.

Supervision of the health of locomotive mechanical equipment: Based on the on-board sensor data of the running gear and the data of ground transportation, safety, preparation, and maintenance, combined with the extensive expert experience and fault samples accumulated by partners in the field of running gear over a long period of time, a locomotive running gear fault prediction and health management model is constructed to realize the health assessment and life prediction functions of the running gear, and promote the transformation of locomotives from "planned maintenance" to "predictive maintenance".

Case 3: 5G high-speed rail intelligent operation and maintenance of Guangzhou Railway Bureau

The high-definition appearance inspection pictures taken by the on-board suspension equipment anti-loosening inspection station preset on the EMU running line are uploaded to the railway bureau's data processing center through the 5G network for intelligent analysis to form an inspection report to eliminate equipment hidden dangers, prevent dangers, and clear obstacles for safe travel. The inspection station has a more precise shooting angle and higher clarity, which can achieve a double improvement in accuracy and efficiency.

5G automatic download and dump of massive vehicle-ground data is a massive vehicle-mounted driving data and video data dump service based on 5G, which realizes data transmission during train operation, greatly improves transmission efficiency, simplifies tedious manual operations such as traditional wired transmission and mobile hard disk copying, and realizes data transmission without perception and human intervention, achieving an efficiency improvement of more than 10 times.

The 5G high-speed rail beyond-visual-range early warning "Clairvoyance" is a "video on board" service carried out along the high-speed rail line. It can transmit high-definition video of road conditions beyond visual range to the monitoring preview screen in the EMU driver's cab in real time through the 5G network, providing the driver with a "clairvoyance" function; at the same time, the safety warning video in front is transmitted to the car in real time, and preview prompts are given to facilitate the driver to make emergency decisions in time and take corresponding measures, thereby improving driving safety and protecting the lives and property of the people.

Conclusion

In summary, the application of 5G in scenarios such as smart railway stations, intelligent operation and maintenance, vehicle-to-ground communication, and high-definition surveillance video transmission has not only enhanced the safety of railway transportation, improved transportation efficiency and line inspection efficiency, but also saved a lot of labor costs. The application of 5G technology has provided independent innovation capabilities for China's railway intelligent construction, making China's railways not only ahead of the world in speed, but also in technology.