Best Practices: Motorsport pioneering connectivity innovation for trains and buses

As intercity passenger rail numbers continue to rebound toward the 32.5 million trips that Amtrak users made in 2019, infrastructure operators are likely to find that returning customers carry with them a new set of expectations. In the gig economy era of remote work and flexible hours, there is one tool that many people have come to value above all others: connectivity.

Unfortunately, most of the rail and bus riders who travel to the United States’ most populous urban corridors each day may find the smooth, seamless connectivity they require hard to come by. With fast-moving vehicles, frequent signal dead spots and many users, there are multiple obstacles current products are unable to overcome to provide customers with the connectivity they expect.

Instead, the answer lies in looking further afield at the best practices being adopted by other sectors to tackle comparable problems. Teams competing in the pinnacle of motorsport, Formula 1, for example, have come to recognize that hardware alone cannot solve this issue. Rather, by pairing cutting-edge equipment with equally revolutionary software to create an all-in-one solution, game-changing advances can be made.

Active Antenna hardware offers a range of benefits not previously available on the commercial market. The Active Antenna is a smart antenna that brings everything together into one single simple environmentally friendly device. Combined with the Formula One aggregation technology, this approach provides never before seen amounts of data connectivity both with reliability and the amount of data that can be pushed through live. An embedded 5G modem and edge computing capability provide superior throughput and futureproof connectivity. This technology allows for the removal and simplification of components. Saving space and weight while reducing maintenance time, an Active Antenna is not only a better-performing solution, but greener and cheaper too thanks to reduced fuel consumption and less complex operation.

Fleet Connect software, meanwhile, uses the process of aggregation to rapidly switch between the strongest network signal providers at any given moment. By splitting transmitted data across these networks in real time and reassembling it in the cloud en route to its destination, the software can transmit more quickly and reliably than conventional alternatives, reducing blackspots and providing a consistent connectivity stream. Bus and rail operators have been looking for a connectivity solution to provide passenger Wi-Fi solutions, but traditional solutions have not been able to approach 1GB data stream connectivity. The Active Antenna and Fleet Connect software approach has accomplished this.

By learning from the best practices from Formula 1 teams, transport providers can now offer industry leading connectivity, performance and reliability to the people who use their services. What’s more, by replacing yards of RF cable per car with a single ethernet connection, both operating and maintenance costs can be reduced, offering improvements for users and operators alike.

Jimmy Morgan serves as business development manager, Connected Intelligence – Americas, for McLaren Applied. A long-time technology professional, Morgan specializes in the delivery of innovative on-board and infrastructure hardware and software solutions for the transport industry. He is currently focussed on supporting the adoption of cutting-edge vehicle connectivity, enabling trains, buses and autonomous vehicles to benefit from high speed 5G networks.