Samsung announced that its LTE-Railway (LTE-R) solution has gone live on the 41km-long Busan Metro line 1 that covers 40 stations in the region. This is nation's first case of the LTE-R technology being used during operation of a train/metro, claims Samsung.
The Busan Transportation Corporation(BTC), SK Telecom and Samsung collaborated to replace the existing analogue wireless technology used for mission critical railway operations with the new LTE-R solution. The parties have been testing the newly adopted communication systems since February for final safety checkup. The test drive also included an interoperability test between onboard equipment on the metro and the LTE-R mobile device installed on the railway/train.
LTE-R was developed for the next-generation of mission-critical communication which is essential for railway operation and maintenance. What sets 4G based LTE-R apart from the incumbent analogue or 2G GSM based technologies is that it can provide stable multimedia services. Compared to the one-to-one voice call service between the control center, station employee, and the train engineer that has been available so far, LTE-R technology enables multimedia-based group call/SMS services on top of the voice call service.
The technology better equips rail operators in case of an accident because it transmits real-time video of the station to the central control center. Additionally, real-time group/individual communication is made possible between the train engineer and control center. The technology can also be used for mission critical communication that depends on high speed, security and stability because it is based on LTE technology, which carries features such as latency as low as 10ms and QoS management support.
Said II-gyu Choi, SVP and Head of Public Business Office, SK Telecom
SK Telecom has successfully replaced legacy analogue communications network into a multimedia capable LTE railway network which transforms operation procedure more intuitive and efficient.
Jinsoo, SVP and Head of Domestic Business Marketing in Networjs Business, Samsung
Reliability and stability are critical because they are directly tied to public safety. Today's launch of the Samsung LTE-R solution with BTC and SK Telecom is a huge milestone for the industry.
