Nokia
Now Arriving at Track 4.0
- This article first appeared in the Railway-News magazine Issue 3 2022.
Breakthroughs in automation and analytics are fuelling the new digital railway, but tomorrow’s innovations can’t run on today’s connectivity: the rail of tomorrow is riding on private LTE and 5G wireless networks.
Shunting by camera and sensor, not workers. Wholly driverless parking of empty trains. Remote maintenance with expert consultation. And more insight-rich data uploaded in a day – relayed by everything from track and rolling-stock-placed sensors to CCTV cameras and drones – than what could once be produced in a year.
Just a handful of snapshots from the railway digital transformation scrapbook being composed right now by the networks powering Industry 4.0: industrial-grade private wireless networks based on LTE and 5G.
When Wi-Fi Goes Off the Rails
The importance of robust, resilient and virtually impenetrable private wireless networking to the digitalisation-driven possibilities of Industry 4.0, from driving automation, to streamlining processes, to finding staggering efficiencies, can’t be understated. And in the world of rail operations, where connecting IIoT sensors on engines, workers and rolling stock across vast rail yards, and the radio interference from metallic surfaces and insufficient mobility support, make Wi-Fi problematic, a self-contained private wireless network’s deterministic performance makes it the perfect solution for mission-critical operations, especially when worker and passenger safety are just as critical.
