Unveiled during the show, Lilee and Alstom's jointly-developed CMU 2000 family of communication management units (CMUs) and communications management technology will serve as the backbone of Alstom's PTC solution. The system consists of an onboard Mobile Communications Manager (MCM), wayside Base Radio Communications Manager (BRCM) and Base Communications Manager (BCM) equipment, and an Office Communications Manager (OCM) for network control centres or remote offices.
These units relay information from PTC-equipped trains back to operations centres and ensure that trains do not pass signals at danger. The CMU-2000 family is fully compliant with Alstom's Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) communications protocols, including ATCS specifications 200 and 250, which are being deployed along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor between Boston, New York and Washington, DC.
Launched in April, the centrepiece of Cisco and Lilee Systems' architecture, Cisco PTC 1.0, are the TransAir 220MHz Software Defined Radio, backhaul routers and switches, the core network, and a cloud computing platform.
A proof-of-concept network has been constructed in the San Francisco Bay Area to verify the architecture, which the companies describe as the first end-to-end communications network for PTC with a proof-of-concept network. The PTC radios are located at base stations, along the track, and onboard the locomotive, and are integrated with Cisco's remote switching and Unified MPLS mobile transport for mobile backhaul.
Cisco and Lilee Systems say the benefit of an all-in-one solution is that it minimises potential design and implementation risks, and provides the opportunity for greater interoperability.
