Lilee Systems has announced its collaboration with Fluidmesh Networks to provide reliable train to ground communications to railways around the world.
Fluidmesh Networks developed an innovative wireless train-to-ground solution based on an MPLS protocol. The system provides up to 500 Mbps of usable throughput on-board trains traveling at a speed of up to 220 mph and supports both vital and non-vital applications. Thanks to some specialized antenna and radio technology, Fluidmesh solutions works both above ground and underground and support a trackside spacing up to 8Km, the highest in the industry.
As the interest and demand for more onboard applications is growing, so is the need for high bandwidth data requirements. There is a significant focus on augmenting the number of applications and services onboard the trains to provide increased safety, information, and connectivity to passengers, as well as real-time monitoring systems. These new requirements increase the importance of having a reliable, robust infrastructure for train to ground communications, as more and more services add pressure to the bandwidth needed to support them, increasing the cost of LTE significantly.
Lilee Systems’ onboard gateway serves as the central communications hub for all operational and passenger services that require high throughput connectivity, compute, and storage. The Lilee platform functions as the communications gatekeeper, determining what communication link or links to connect based on the operational goals and priorities of the railway. Communication can be provided by the radio trackside network, LTE, or a combination of both. It can also be provided by Wi-Fi networks, when available, at train stations and yards.
Each additional radio technology places huge operational burden on operators. Lilee provides a plug and play architecture that isolates the underlying technological difference and abstracts operational and quality parameters to power the connectivity algorithms that dynamically manage user and application traffic flows. This abstraction powers Lilee Systems’ open connectivity platform to seamlessly integrate LTE, Wi-Fi, wired and trackside radio technologies, and dynamically balance the traffic across all the links based on user defined policies.
The integration between Lilee Systems and Fluidmesh allows for a seamless switching between communication networks making it transparent for end-user applications that are sensitive to network latency. This is very relevant for passengers that rely on the onboard Wi-Fi network to have uninterrupted VoIP calls or video conferences, for instance.
“This collaboration between Lilee Systems and Fluidmesh Networks provides technological advantages to railways that require reliable, always-on connectivity to support high throughput, delay sensitive, and mission critical on-board applications,” explained Sam Kanakamedala, director of product management at Lilee Systems. “Our code level integration with Fluidmesh Networks solutions enables us to bring handover time between Fluidmesh and other technologies down by a factor of 50. Our connectivity algorithms demonstrate better handover times in various partner testing and this new enhancement puts us well ahead of our competition.”
A combination of trackside radio and LTE provides flexibility to railways that need to balance the capital expense of acquiring radio network infrastructure and the operating cost of LTE. It also allows railways to replace and upgrade communications infrastructure with minimum to no impact to the passengers and the communities that they serve.
“Seamless integration of Fluidmesh MPLS Trackside and LTE connectivity is a needed step in solving the on-board connectivity problem on rail. The partnership with Lilee allows our customers to have full control and flexibility in the transition to a trackside network making it a lot easier on their budgets without affecting performances. We are already seeing benefits from the integration with Lilee with customers in Europe and Asia and look forward to continue to leverage each other technology to deliver a better solution to the market,” explained Cosimo Malesci, Fluidmesh co-founder and EVP sales.
The collaboration with Fluidmesh Networks demonstrates Lilee Systems’ open platform capabilities to integrate with leading third party technologies and services to continue to meet the requirements of train and rail operators for operations, safety, and passenger services. Lilee Systems’ open platform technology has a leading role in the rail industry as it integrates with other major mission-critical systems providers for the management of devices and systems onboard locomotives, wayside equipment, and back office servers for interoperable communications globally.
“We at Lilee Systems are excited to collaborate with Fluidmesh Networks, a leading player in the industry,” said Jia-Ru Li, founder and CEO, Lilee Systems. “Fluidmesh is a great technology partner and we are pleased to provide the railways with the flexibility of this integration that can augment the value of their communication infrastructure and minimize downtime. Lilee Systems understands the importance of open platforms and the value of collaboration to achieve the industry’s business goals, therefore we are pleased that our technology can integrate with the technology of choice of our customers.”
