Huawei shows us its 5G Private Network at the EWG Intermodal Station for Remote Control of Cranes and Merchandise

Taking advantage of the Intelligent Rail & Logistics Forum 2023 (Intelligent Rail and Logistics Forum 2023) that has been held in Fényeslitke (Hungary), Huawei has taught us the applications of its technologies based on 5G and Artificial Intelligence in the field of industry and manufacturing. At this event, the UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) has announced the Global Alliance of Artificial Intelligence in which Huawei and other collaborating companies will be a part to apply these new technologies to all types of industrial environments.

Specific, Huawei has shown us how they have integrated their infrastructure private 5G service at Intermodal station c (East-West Gate) located in Hungary to manage and receive a large part of the freight traffic via rail from east to west. These infrastructures allow goods to be moved between trains that use broad-gauge tracks that come from countries like China through Ukraine and standard-gauge tracks from the Schengen area, assuming an outlay of around 100 million euros for its construction.

For this, this station, which began operating in October 2022, uses a system of remote-controlled cranes to move up to 1 million TEUs (a measure that is equivalent to 20 feet). To manage the entire system, Huawei has deployed a 5G network with its own internal cell that allows everything from managing facilities, cameras and sensors to remote control of station machinery, including the huge cranes that handle the containers with merchandise.

This network is 5G SA (Standalone), using only this new technology that allows high bandwidth and very low latencies. Precisely, low latencies is one of the key points to be able to manage heavy machinery remotely, if there were delays in communication, it would be very difficult to manage a crane that moves tons of containers between trains. In addition, everything, except for driving the trains, is done remotely within a 3.5 km long railway terminal, so the use of traditional WiFi networks would be unfeasible both due to range and latencies and the movement of the machinery.

To give us an idea, the EWG Intermodal station has an area of ​​5 million square meters.

This proprietary 5G infrastructure also allows the accurately track any object without the need for GPSso any type of machinery or packages can be tracked even if they are indoors or inside a container.

Huawei has highlighted that having the merchandise management automated and with remote control allows a much safer working environment, since the possibility of being run over or of personal injury is reduced to practically 0 in the event that any carca moves or falls. After all, the crane operators will be in their offices.

On the other hand, this also implies a reduction of the personnel necessary to operate a station of these dimensions, since the same operator can handle several cranes and other vehicles. Specifically, Huawei points out that they hope that the EWG Intermodal station can be managed with only 40% of the usual staff in a station of these characteristics.

Efficiency in managing traffic and moving loads also increases by up to 20~30%, and since all communication between machinery, devices, control terminals, etc. It is done wirelessly, the costs of adding new machinery or functions to the infrastructure are lower as it does not require extra wiring.

The EWG Intermodal station is the first container terminal to use a private 5G network in Europe, and one of the most modern and largest in the world

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