Huawei Advances China's Railway Communication into R4 Softswitch Era

In recent years, rapidly rising demand for energy has heavily taxed the Daqin freight line since its launch in 2005. As a result cargo throughput and demand on reliability, efficiency and security across the Daqin GSM-R network have dramatically increased.

Responding to this challenge, Huawei applied a core network solution based on state-of-the-art 3GPP R4 architecture. The solution implemented for Daqin includes 1+1 dual homing Mobile Switching Center, dual-Media Gateway technology and redundant IP interface architecture to boost reliability and performance through geographic and nodal redundancy concepts and enables smooth evolution to next-generation networking.

The migration of a rail operational GSM-R network from R99 to R4 softswitch on the Daqin line is an important milestone, said Xu Zhiyu, Vice President of GSM-R Product Line, Huawei. Many GSM-R operators today see the benefits a modern R4 softswitch architecture can bring, but have refrained from an upgrade in order to avoid impact on rail operation. It's a groundbreaking step that has connected three main railway networks of China, including Wuhan-Guangzhou and Beijing-Shanghai lines, and has enabled the Ministry of Railways to efficiently manage operations across the entire network. As global railway operators' network demands increase, we look forward to helping rail customers around the world to meet those challenges head on.

In April 2010, Huawei successfully launched the first R4-based core network on the Chengdu-Dujiangyan line and completed the first smooth cutover project from a R99 to an R4 softswicth on the Datong-Qinhuangdao line. With the latest success in migrating Daqin line, it is predictable that more and more GSM-R operators will consider R4 softswitch upgrades for their operational lines.