As Driver Miles Increase, So Too Do Connectivity Needs On America’s Roadways
Since 1916 the United States Federal government has been enacting various points of legislation in regard to creating, connecting, and completing an interstate highway system. In 1956 the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act created the highway system as we know it today, with standardized methods of construction and signage throughout each state that it passes through. The completion of the system took decades, and it wasn’t officially proclaimed complete until 1992. However, the system is constantly evolving and growing, with multiple significant proposed additions either already approved or under consideration.
In December 2021, on the heels of a global pandemic and interrupted mass transit availability, vehicular travel on America’s roadways increased by 11.2%, to 3.23 trillion miles. That was the second consecutive month that US travel had surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and is a statistic that has been holding steady ever since.
As America’s roadways continue to get busier and technology marches forward, the telecommunications systems present on the highways require constant maintenance and upkeep. It’s been estimated that roughly 116 million vehicles take to the roadways every day in the United States. That’s a lot of wear and tear on our highways and streets, in addition to an incredible amount of information being passed through CCTV, toll collections, Emergency Response networks, and more.
Keeping Drivers, Maintenance Crews, and Law Enforcement Safe
In order to keep drivers, law enforcement and public safety personnel, maintenance crews, and anyone else on the roads safe, as well as efficiently relay information about traffic delays, construction, and weather, it’s crucial to have a network that’s constantly secure, connected, and reliable.
The interstate highway system in the United States is unique compared to other countries. Whereas in many other countries, the systems are all maintained by a single governmental department, in the United States, the ownership and maintenance of the highways falls to the state in which they lie.
This means that each state is required to maintain its own systems of CCTVs, toll collections, LED displays, emergency response networks, and so on, while also ensuring that information can be easily transmitted to motorists, public works agencies, and law enforcement both in-state and out.
Evolving Highway Systems Require Upgraded Technology
As the highway system continues to age and evolve, it’s important that new and existing technologies can co-exist without necessitating a complete overhaul of the technological infrastructure. The Nokia Converged IP/MPLS for Highways opens the gates to flexibility while maintaining safety and security on roadways. A smooth migration to new systems is made possible by ensuring full interoperability with legacy systems, keeping operating and improvement costs down while increasing network availability and connectivity.
High Capacity Networks Support Multiple Applications
- Greater network capacity and performance able to support high-bandwidth applications, networked CCTV.
- Safety systems, including emergency contact points, mobile radio, and alarm systems.
- Large amounts of data, for example, CCTV feeds, can be transmitted and analyzed in real time, increasing situational awareness.
- Corporate and other VPNs and data services can be accessed through the same network, even in tunnels.
Solution Blueprint
The highway infrastructure typically consists of a hierarchy of control centers and multitudes of gantries, sign posts and roadside cabinets with various devices (e.g., displays, sensors and controllers) on long stretches of roads). Due to the critical nature of these applications, it is crucial that connectivity is still available even during extreme weather events or ferocious forest fires in order to maintain full road condition awareness and provide timely travel advice to keep travelers safe.
The Converged IP/MPLS Network solution blueprint is grounded in global, standards-based IP/MPLS technology that:
- Supports point-to-point and multipoint TDM, Ethernet and IP network services with IP/MPLS VPN technology
- Integrates tightly with optical and microwave transmission and is interoperable with CSP VPNs
- Attains the utmost network resiliency through route-rich topologies such as mesh and ring of rings
- Expands network use by offering multiservice using spare bandwidth capacity for other infrastructure such as renewables, rural broadband and smart cities without jeopardizing critical applications performance.
Nokia Solution Benefits
The Nokia Converged IP/MPLS Network for Highways solution capitalizes on IP/MPLS capabilities to offer road operators a wide variety of benefits.
Application Dedicated VPN
The Nokia solution offers flexible IP/MPLS VPN service capability to support IP, Ethernet and TDM
communications in both point-to-point and multipoint configurations to meet the communications
requirements of different highways applications. Each application is carried over a dedicated VPN,
segregated from all other applications.
Minimize Equipment Management
The solution’s native IP routing and TDM capabilities eliminate the need for external routers and TDM multiplexers, minimizing equipment management efforts, power consumption, cooling, sparing and footprint. A Nokia IP/MPLS network also prepares operators to embrace emerging technologies such as private LTE, low-power wide-area (LPWA) network and roadside cloud.
Share Networks without Degrading Critical Application Performance
Moreover, by harnessing the power and flexibility of IP/MPLS VPN service convergence, highway operators can adopt a shared network paradigm and backhaul traffic for other infrastructures and users without any degradation of critical application performance.
Uninterrupted Operations With Ultra-High Network Availability
The solution supports ultra-high network availability, which is imperative for road operators to continue to monitor road conditions and alert travelers even under extremely inclement weather. With the Nokia solution’s resiliency, highway applications can continue to run despite multiple network faults.
Traditional ring topology can offer strong protection from one network fault. When a fault occurs, data will be rerouted in the opposite direction with little impact to applications.
However, extreme weather events are more likely to affect multiple locations at once. In this case, rerouted data is black-holed by the second point of failure. This causes the highway segment between the two points of failure to be isolated, leaving operators blind and travelers in the dark.
Seamless Transmission Medium Integration
- The solution offers seamless integration with optical and packet microwave transmission, in the form of functionality incorporation or cross-domain unified network management.
- Data can be forwarded without restriction by various transmission media to facilitate simplified, elegant network design and enables high network operational, space and power efficiency.
Higher Network Operations Agility With Unified, Simplified Network Management
- The Nokia Network Services Platform (Nokia NSP) has the capabilities to consolidate the service, network and element management layers across IP/MPLS into a unified manager.
- Greatly simplifies management tasks by supporting fast, easy and highly flexible provisioning; proactive service assurance that helps to resolve problems early on; and intelligent alarm correlation capabilities that expedite restoration.
- Ready to evolve to a software defined networking (SDN) controller, ushering in new network optimization and programmability capabilities when required.
The Road To High-Performance Intelligent Transportation Systems
- A Nokia IP/MPLS network is an integral part of a comprehensive defense framework to protect from cyber and physical threats.
- It offers a wide range of network defense capabilities, including encryption and a firewall. Its resiliency is a bulwark against physical threats.
- Coupled with security best practices, can effectively deter attacks, enabling the infrastructure to operate without compromise.
Infinity Technology Solutions for Nokia Converged IP/MPLS
With Nokia’s complete portfolio of networking solutions at our fingertips, Infinity Technology Solutions has decades of experience installing, maintaining, and optimizing networks for various industries, including state and municipal departments of transportation.
