Realizing a Centralized Monitoring and Management Solution for Expressways

Industry Application: Highway Management Industry Sector: Transportation Location: Hebei, China

Introduction

Stretching 58.4 km, the Langzhuo Expressway spans from Song Lin Dian in Zhuozhou City to Jiouzhou in Langfang City in Northeastern China. It is a critical part of “Line 3” of Hebei Province’s superhighway network. The fragmented development of the Langzhuo Expressway has resulted in the road system being operated as multiple separate systems. Consequently, key infrastructure such as video surveillance, electric power monitoring, equipment monitoring, and other systems operate independently, with no resource sharing or exchange among them. This requires many workers to operate each individual system, resulting in inefficient management and high operation costs.

System Requirements

  • Centralized management for a distributed network architecture
  • Stability in a harsh environments with high humidity and extreme temperatures

Project Implementation

  • EKI-9628G-4CI: 24GE+4G Combo L3 Managed Ethernet Switch; -40~75°C operating temperature
  • EKI-7710G-2CI: 8GE+2G Combo Managed Ethernet Switch; -40~75°C operating temperature
  • EKI-1521CI: 1-port RS-232/422/485 Serial Device Server; isolation and a wide operating temperature

System Description

The solution proposed by Advantech requires a Layer 3 Switch, a Layer 2 Switch with X-ring redundancy, decoders, and display units to be installed in the control center for monitoring, while other switches are located strategically at network nodes where monitoring is required, thus facilitating centralized management of a distributed network architecture.

The solution consists of 3 VLAN areas connecting three different types of equipment. VLAN11 is connected to local coders/decoders in the control center; VLAN12 is connected to serial device servers and others; and VLAN13 is used for the management and setup of switches. The Layer 3 switch serves as the communication link between these VLANs.

Benefits and Advantages

The strength of this solution is that each VLAN handles the traffic data assigned to it. The video data streams do not interfere with the control data streams, thus optimizing the management of network data.

The system diagram above depicts the proposed solution for the overall network architecture. The data are divided into two separate routes for transmission after the video streams pass through the video splitter. Then, the video data travel through the ring network and are decoded at the end before being visualized on one of the display screen. The video streams, transmitting via multicast, require a reliable switch that supports IGMP snooping. The EKI-7710G-2CI industrial switch was chosen because of its multicasting functionality and ability to operate in environments with high humidity and extreme temperatures, such as in tunnels, thus ensuring stable and fast transmission of video streams.