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Railway networks depend on telecoms.  Without adequate systems in place, trains would not be able to run. GSM-R, adopted in most European countries following International Union of Railways (UIC) guidelines, provides a vital radio communication link between train drivers and signallers, as well as supporting the European Train Control System (ETCS), which details train movements without the need for lineside signalling. Internet Protocol (IP) technologies are used widely in support of signalling activities, critical communication links, surveillance and CCTV monitoring amongst many others, supported by an extensive fibre and copper network. Wi-Fi provides connectivity to the internet for passengers but...

Mission critical communications are currently supported by the Airwave network; however by the end of 2019 it is the intention of the government to replace this network with a more cost-effective and up-to-date broadband communications system. The main issue is that time is running out. The government has chosen a system - LTE (Long Term Evolution); however LTE was never designed for mission critical communications. It was designed to provide mobile communications to smart devices, offering quicker access to data. What this means is that the LTE systems needs to be adapted to make it suitable for mission critical communications,...

2018 will be the start of the journey for those defining their 5G strategy. Specifications will be frozen by 3GPP in Sept 2018, with commercial deployments expected from around 2020. Senior managers, key thinkers and strategists are considering the ways in which the potential of 5G communications can be maximised in such contexts as connected and autonomous vehicles, massive machine-type communications, critical communications, smart cities, virtual and augmented reality, Industry 4.0 and so on. Many network operators have already conducted trials of 5G, as well as announcing plans to demonstrate the technology and to rollout commercial deployments. In South Korea,...

Networks have passed the point where they need to evolve to meet the growing demands placed upon them, not only for the insatiable demand for modern services but for an ever-increasing number of connected devices requiring uninterrupted connectivity. Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) have made inroads into the deployment and management of communication networks. They provide an agile and scalable solution to meet changing demands in minutes, which would previously have taken days or weeks to resolve. By taking hardware that can be virtualised and deployed on a common infrastructure with shared networking resources, efficiencies can...

The demand for mobile broadband services is putting increased pressure on LTE mobile operators. Simply deploying LTE base stations to provide LTE coverage is only part of the solution. Radio network optimization is widely accepted as a means of improving capacity and performance in a cost-effective manner. The Wray Castle LTE Optimization course enables optimization engineers to identify key parameters which can be tuned to provide peak performance demanded by subscribers. Many optimization engineers will have cut their teeth on GSM and UMTS networks. But LTE is a relatively new technology with its own unique radio characteristics. This training course...

The Wray Castle Microwave Link Planning course is structured as a thorough step-by-step guide through the practical aspects of the link planning process. A series of exercises, students will design and plan a microwave link network to reinforce the learning gained in the theory sessions. Availability and reliability, path profiling and clearance criteria, power budgets, rainfall and multipath fading, diversity techniques, and frequency planning are all the key topics covered. The course focuses on the ITU-R models for calculating rainfall fade depth, the impact of the melting layer, selective fading (signature method), enhancement or “up-fades” and space and frequency diversity improvement. Other...

The Wray Castle Strategy and Technology – Positioning for 5G training course rapidly builds a range of competencies critical to maximising the opportunities being presented by both digital transformation and the adoption of 5G and advanced technology concepts. The 5G initiative provides the focus for the next digital revolution that encompasses connected innovation and the increasing digitalisation of a wide range of industries, as well as advanced connectivity and communications. It provides the foundation for transforming business models and positioning; the customer proposition and focus; and the technologies that underpin that transformation. However, aligning strategic technology choices to take full advantage of...

The Wray Castle GSM-R Engineering Overview is a unique course tailored to those involved in railway networks and GSM-R. GSM-R is the railway enhanced version of GSM - the Global System for Mobile communications. Originally a European initiative promoted by the International Union of Railways (UIC) to provide seamless pan-European radio communications for railway traffic traversing international borders. The UIC collaborated with ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) to specify a system that has now been adopted worldwide. The Wray Castle course introduces the work of the UIC and ETSI in developing a standards based technology specifically for railway operators. It introduces the...

The term ‘Unified Communications’ describes any communications system, usually a business system, which encompasses a broad range of technologies and applications that have been designed, sold and supported as a single communications platform or as one entity. Unified communications systems generally enable companies to use integrated data, video and voice in one supported product. Unified communication systems typically include the means to integrate real-time or near-real-time unified messaging, collaboration and interactive systems. For example, a single user can access a variety of communication applications such as e-mail, SMS, video, voice and others through a single user mailbox. Additionally, unified communications...

In the first part of this blog, we discussed the requirements for 5G and the specification process being undertaken by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Here, we continue the discussion by investigating the potential technical solutions. Mobile telecommunication systems have traditionally operated in the UHF band, from 300 MHz to 3 GHz. This has given the best trade-off between the competing issues of coverage and capacity, which are greater at low and high frequencies respectively. Unfortunately the UHF band is now extremely fragmented and congested, so attention is being directed to the SHF...

SDN (Software Defined Networking) is an approach to data networking in which the control functions are decoupled from the physical infrastructure. This allows network administrators to support a dynamic, manageable and cost-effective network making it ideal for the high-bandwidth nature of today’s applications. SDN addresses the fact that the static architecture of conventional networks is not suited to the dynamic computing and storage needs of modern data centres, campuses, and network operator environments. A communications protocol known as OpenFlow is considered as an enabler of SDN. OpenFlow enables remote controllers to determine the path of packets through the network of...

Mobile networks are facing challenges on multiple fronts. Traditional sources of revenue, voice and text messaging, are losing ground to services being provided OTT on their data channels. At the same time, the network infrastructure needed to handle all that data traffic needs to grow to meet the expanding capacity requirements. As a result, infrastructure costs are growing faster than subscriber revenue growth. Network operators are realizing that their networks need to become more flexible and agile so they can introduce new services more quickly in order to increase revenue. NFV introduces virtualization technologies into the core network to create...

Mobile broadband traffic loads are increasing rapidly which is leading to the need for additional radio spectrum to satisfy the demand. LTE networks are mostly deployed in spectrum from 700 MHz to 2.6 GHz. While LTE mobile broadband in licensed spectrum is highly efficient due to its exclusive occupancy of the spectrum, the amount of available licensed spectrum can be limited and expensive. The amount of unlicensed spectrum (especially in the 5 GHz band) assigned or currently planned to be assigned is comparable to, or even more than, the amount of licensed spectrum available. Many operators have already deployed Wi-Fi...

The C-RAN (Centralised or Cloud Radio Access Network) is a cellular network architecture designed for efficiency and lower costs when deploying public access small cells. The C-RAN architecture separates the BBU (Base Band Unit) from the RRH (Remote Radio Head) using the CPRI (Common Public Radio Interface). The CPRI link between the BBU and the RRH is known as the ‘fronthaul’ whereas the backhaul network connects the BBU with the core network. The BBU is responsible for the signal processing functions and the RRH transmits the signal over the radio interface. Placing BBUs at central locations enables more precise control...

The IoT is connecting new smart devices to the Internet from such diverse sectors as manufacturing floors, energy grids, healthcare facilities, domestic appliance and transportation systems. When an object can represent itself digitally, it can be controlled from anywhere. This connectivity means more data, gathered from more places, with more ways to increase efficiency and improve safety and security. A first step toward the IoT is to convert networks using proprietary or legacy protocols to IP-based networks. A wide range of devices can employ sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects – from roads to pacemakers. These are then linked...

Modern cellular networks support a concept known as the heterogeneous network – the term ‘heterogeneous’ is generically defined as meaning ‘diverse in character or content’ and that is the sense in which it is employed here. These networks utilize various access technologies such as macro cells, small cells, Wi-Fi, LTE, LTE-Advanced, and WLAN to provide seamless connectivity. A HetNet is one in which many base stations, of varying types and sizes, share the same radio resource environment to provide a multi-layered or hierarchical service consisting of network of macro cells and small cells which can offer ‘multi-mode’ (a mixture of...

It is now seven years since LTE was standardized and six years since the launch of the first LTE networks. With new generations of mobile communication technology appearing every ten years or so, and network operators struggling to meet their users’ demands for bandwidth, research for 5G is already well under way. The demands on 5G networks will be severe: network traffic is forecast to increase by a factor 1,000 over the next 10-12 years, while the growth of the Internet of Things suggests that the number of connected devices may reach 50 billion by 2020. At the same time,...

In December 2015, the UK Government signed contracts with Everything Everywhere (EE) and Motorola Solutions as part of the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP). They join Kellogg, Brown and Root in a commitment to deliver the UKs £1bn Emergency Services Network (ESN). The system currently deployed is based upon an ageing circuit switched technology - Terrestrial Trunked Radio Access (TETRA), primarily designed for the dominant mode of communication used by the emergency services – voice. As the potential benefits of access to high speed data services become apparent, TETRA as a technology will be unable to satisfy the demands...