Case Study: Russian Railways achieves reliable high-speed rail communications with Huawei GSM-R

GSM-R Solution Takes the Gold at Sochi

Russian Railways, the largest rail company in Russia, needed a highly reliable wireless communications system for its new 96-mile Sochi High-Speed Rail Line, built for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The line had to meet ETCS-2 GSM-R standards, operate in extremely cold conditions, and support trains running at up to 248 mph, all on a tight construction schedule. Huawei provided the GSM-R solution.

Huawei designed a customized GSM-R network with digital modeling, network simulation, distributed base stations, co-cell technology, and redundant hot-standby equipment to ensure reliability in harsh environments. Huawei also completed interoperability testing with signal and dispatch system vendors ahead of schedule and delivered the project before the end of 2013. The result was a 99.999% reliable communication network that supported more than 140,000 passengers per day at launch and over 1 million passengers during the Olympics, while also providing a platform for future LTE evolution without new hardware.

Russian Railways