The Southern Railway Microwave/OFC Transmission Network
The Southern Railway is a Government - owned entity that is part of
the Indian Railway, which is the world's second largest railway. The Southern
Railway is the largest transporter of people and freight in the region,
and this calls for extensive communication links along the entire length
of the railway line, which extends southwards from the city of Madras,
the HQ.
What are the major uses of the Southern Railway communication network
?
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They allow rapid communication between all the stations in the Railway
system.
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Along with the other regional railway systems in the Indian Railway, the
communication network is used to implement the country - wide Passenger
Reservation System ( PRS ), called Concert, allowing passengers
to book tickets from any place to any destination, irrespective of where
they are when they book the tickets.
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More recently, the communication links are used as WAN links to connect
the various Southern Railway / Indian Railway LANs throughout the country,
in a single, large intranet called Railnet. In fact, this
document resides on a web server that is part of Railnet.
The use of the communication network for allowing rapid communications
between all the railway personnel, cannot be exxagerated. In such a big
railway system covering so many hundreds of towns / cities / villages,
the need for a communication system covering every step of the way is simply
inescapable. The Southern Railway has gone in for its own private network
completely independent of the national long distance provider, the Depratment
of Telecommunications ( now called Bharat Sanchar Nigam ). And the Southern
Railway has traffic that justifies the establishment of such a large exclusive
communication network. The Southern Railway communication network infrasrtucture
includes the following.......
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Switches - at all major towns; each switch covers all stations within a
certain radius.
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Transmission
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Digital Microwave - covering almost the entire length.
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Optical Fiber Cable - presently from Madras to Trichy, with work progressing
to extend the OFC coverage.
We ( myself and 4 others - Praveen, Bhaskar, Madhan and Namrata ) visited
the transmission and switching facility in December 2000 and had a very
informative experience. Our experience was all the more enjoyable, thanks
to Mr. Sankaramoorthy, the Assistant Signal and Telecommunication
Engineer (OFC). He spent a lot of time with us and explained things to
us with a patience that was unbelievable.
We also are very grateful to Mr. Ajith Kumar, the Deputy
Chief Signalling and Telecommunication Engineer, who agreed to let us come
for a visit in the first place.
The links below say more about the what we saw - concepts, systems,
equipment.
The switch ( telephone exchange ) at Madras.
Digital Transmission Basics
The Digital Microwave transmission system.
The Optical Fiber Cable transmission system.
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