Ethernet Communication Products for the Rail Industry
Lantech Communications have a long history in producing high quality feature rich Ethernet communication products for the rail industry, should this be onboard train / tram or trackside applications. Lantech products for the rail industry conform to EN50155 / EN45545-2 & EN50121-4 standards, and comprise of the following types of products Ethernet switches, Wireless access points & 4G routers.
Lantech products come in various housings IP30/IP41/IP43/IP54/IP65/IP67 to cover all kinds of environmental conditions, Lantech have been developing Link Train Discovery Protocol (LTDP) this reduces maintenance requirements therefore reducing costs, Train Wireless Carriage Coupling (TWCC) and Config Server has also been developed in parallel with LTDP to work in a similar way using wireless between the rail car/carriages. The two systems can be used together to provide a failsafe system. Lantech are well established at providing on board Ethernet switches for train applications and developing new products to suit the market & customer requirements, there is developing market for increased bandwidth for providing customer WIFI access, CCTV, passenger information systems, on board train control systems, and onboard monitoring systems with remote reporting, Lantech can provide products for all these on train applications for Ethernet requirements.
Rail Vehicle Ethernet Switches
Lantech provide a range of rail vehicle Ethernet switches that are EN50155 approved ranging from simple unmanaged 5 port units to 16 port layer 2 units, the range is wide and varied including fibre optic EN50155 switches with Gigabit or 10 Gigabit uplinks, recently introduced are units with copper 10Gb uplinks. Units can be provided with & without Poe meeting the following standard 802.11af/at 15/30 watts per port. Full Giga models benefit from galvanic isolation between the DC input & case & PoE (in some models). Lantech switches can be supplied with the following power inputs 12V, 72V, 110V & Wide voltage input of 16.8 – 137.5Vdc. In-built within the units are environmental monitoring, users can view the various parameters within the units, from input voltage & current to operating temperature, CPU usage & memory buffer. One area Lantech have been developing is LTDP (Link Train Discovery Protocol) & Smart DHCP this maintains the same configuration when swapping a switch to keep the same IP addresses for connected devices. When using multiple train rings this enable auto coupling the rings on board. LTDP also reduces maintenance costs by allowing the switch to be replaced without the need of re-configuration, this system will import the file from the master switch automatically.
Wireless Access Points EN50155
Lantech have developed a range of wireless access points to complement the range, these include IEEE802.11ac dual band operation & wireless redundancy. They also include the following benefits MIMO technology with 3T3R, advanced security up to 16 SSID’s, IEEE802.3at PoE 30W per port up to a maximum of 80W PoE budget, Galvanic isolation, TWCC for wireless auto-coupling. The WAP’s also have the ability to manage the data throughput using our load balancing system, this provides eight methods.
EN50155 4G Routers
Lantech have developed a range of EN50155 4G routers to further expand our Ethernet networks for trains product portfolio, the routers are feature rich, with following features dual concurrent LTE modules with 4 sim cards, GPS support, load balancing with 8 methods for multiple WAN’s, inbuilt IEEE802.11ac operating on 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz bands, offering a maximum speed of 1.3Gbps the wireless is also backwards compatible with IEEE802.11g/n.
Some models have built in 2/4 port serial connection for RS232, RS422 or RS485. On RS422/RS485 serial data ports they have 2.5Kv isolation protection, the units have built in Modbus gateway, this allows conversion of Modbus RTU/ASCII to Modbus TCP for device control.
Multisite VPN, Open VPN, L2TP, PPTP, IPsec & Firewall SPI allowing remote users to access the private network with high encryption, the units support the protocols mentioned earlier, using a layer 4 firewall includes DoS* SPI firewall, IP address filter/Mac address Filter*/TCP/UDP port number as well as IP & Mac address Binding*.
The wireless side of these routers have the same features has the wireless access points mentioned earlier.
EN50155 Rail Approved Ethernet Switches
LTDP(Link Train Discovery Protocol), Train Ring, TWCC(Train Wireless Carriage Coupling)
As an established manufacturer of rail approved Ethernet switches, Lantech have looked at ways to make the maintenance easier and system easier to configure and innovative ways to bring new systems to the train / tram market, these start with LTDP a system which can be installed on a train system which allows switches in a single ring to read configuration files from a master switch, maintaining IP addresses etc, because the systems work in a ring with a secondary master, should the ring fail due to a cabling fault or node failure then system will automatically work around the failure, the system also allows the train cars to be swapped around while maintaining the same configuration, so not resetting of IP addresses.
Train Ring for auto coupling topology, during the operation of trains in a fixed formation sometimes these trains need to be joined to create a longer train at peak times, this normally requires the trains to be reconfigured, this means engineers having enough knowledge of Ethernet to undertake this process. Train Ring can provide a system which automatically reconfigure the system in under 50ms without user invention. LTR allows operators to change train formations with minimal downtime, since all settings are done automatically.
TWCC together with Config server uses wireless auto-coupling technology that is ideal for train Refurb Market, this allows the cars/carriages can be added and coupled without any SSID intervention.