Prasarana Powers Service Excellence with Huawei’s All-In-One Rail Communication System

Why Huawei?

Demonstrating superlative experience with railway communication systems, Huawei’s rail solutions cover more than 100,000 km of railway for more than 50 urban rail lines across the globe, backed by an ecosystem of more than 60 partners in the rail industry.

Huawei brought extensive domain knowledge to the table for the integration of such an extensive communication system. Much complexities and risks were inherent to collaborate and supervise third-party device and service suppliers; manage complicated and overlapping construction and commissioning scenarios; and track all documentations across the entire design to implementation process. Not forgetting managing the Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) assurance and testing, certification processes and more.

Huawei’s Solution for Prasarana

• Huawei delivered an All-in-One Integrated Communication System for the Ampang LRT extension comprising of extensive systems including a Central Transmission System (CTS), Data- Communication, Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) system, IP PBX solution, Voice Recording System (VRS), Video Surveillance (CCTV), Passenger Help Points (PHP), Public Address (PA), Passenger Information Display System (PIDS), Clock, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) subsystems, in addition to optical cables and other railway communication devices.
• Enhanced operational visibility with new CTS: Prasarana chose Huawei’s Hybrid Multi-Service Transport Solution (MSTP) to establish a 10G backbone transmission network that supports future scalability to an all-IP transmission network. By converging application data and real-time status information at the operations center, the ultra- high-bandwidth CTS enhanced Prasarana’s operational visibility by enabling its rail operations staff to visually monitor the statuses of devices, stations and trains in real- time. Huawei’s enterprise switches were also deployed to support both mission-critical and non mission-critical IP services, while enabling interconnectivity with the existing transmission system.
• Speed up responsiveness to emergencies and equipment failure: To facilitate seamless internal communication, the legacy UHF-based radio system was replaced by a new third-party TETRA system deployed along both the original and extension lines. Prasarana’s analog telephone system was also replaced with Huawei’s IP PBX solution to provide Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services along both the original and extension lines, featuring both public- and private- telephony integration. Huawei also offered a proven VRS to enable the reliable recording capabilities in the radio trunking and telephone systems, featuring customized mutual backup, archive and deletion features. For track-side communication, Huawei integrated a third-party PHP system to allow Prasarana’s staff to call the customer service or dispatch center via just a one-key function. The capacities of the existing Public Address (PA) and Passenger Information Display Systems (PIDS) were also expanded, with the products and solutions incorporated into Huawei’s communication system for the LRT extension. This enabled more efficient handling of public announcement and passenger information services along the entire Ampang LRT line. Using the new radio trunking system and VoIP telephony systems, Prasarana’s operations staff can now seamlessly contact staff and passengers across its operations centers, stations and even onboard the trains. With voice recording services, productivity is enhanced as passenger announcements can be pre-recorded for specific situations. This speeds up responsiveness in communicating unexpected emergencies or device faults both internally and to passengers. Besides streamlining both internal and external communication, these systems improved operational dispatching efficiencies and enhanced operational management — both key in helping Prasarana ptimize and ensure consistent customer experience in the long run.

• Ensuring comprehensive surveillance for greater peace of mind: To ensure comprehensive surveillance, Huawei implemented a digital, high-definition, intelligent and cloud-based video surveillance solution featuring high- performance IP cameras deployed at stations and trackside along the Ampang LRT extension. Interconnecting with existing NUUO surveillance software platform and Network Video Recorders (NVRs) along the existing railway, Huawei ensured that the new CCTVs complied with urban rail EMC requirements and NEMA 4X/ IP66 protection levels. The new video surveillance system also integrates with the PHP system to record emergencies such as help-seeking scenarios, enabling Prasarana’s operations staff with speedy first-response to urgent situations.

• Ensuring reliability with comprehensive supervision over electrical and power infrastructure: Huawei also helped to replace the existing line’s obsolete SCADA system with a new, third-party SCADA system which helps Prasarana perform real-time monitoring of all electrical and power supply infrastructures along the entire line. To ensure comprehensive supervision, the new SCADA system also controls some of the electrical devices remotely, while collecting alarm information on other subsystems via IP or dry contacts.
• Successful opening of LRT extension with shortened deployment: Huawei’s expert consulting and project delivery services successfully shaved more than 40% off the deployment time by delivering the project in 7 months instead of the planned 12 months. This included efficient management of end-to-end services with proven workflows, including: end-to-end engineering services from design, installation, commissioning to acceptance; an EN50126-compliant end-to-end system assurance services including Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) assurance services, RAM assurance services, security analysis, certification services and a comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) system to ensure the quality delivery of all services. Third-party systems were also subjected to a thorough and stringent 3-step pre-integration, integration and on-site verification process to ensure the stable and reliable interoperability of the functions and performance of interfaces between sub-systems — also contributing to the successful and timely delivery of the new rail communication system for Prasarana’s Ampang LRT Extension.

Fuelling World-Class Public Transportation for Malaysia

Prasarana believed in building a reliable, affordable, proficient, integrated and dynamic rail network to fulfill its mission of increasing public transportation usage on a sustainable basis. To date, the end-to-end communication systems have run smoothly and reliably, while empowering reliable operations on the Ampang LRT Extension.

Huawei played a significant role in helping Prasarana on digital transformation to build a state-of-the-art, modern public transportation system.