Networking and Power Supply Solution for Highway Monitoring Systems

Highways are the most direct public goods provided by the state to society. By 2023, the total mileage of highways nationwide had reached 5.35 million kilometers, including approximately 150,000 kilometers of expressways, ranking first in the world. “To get rich, build roads first” – highway construction and operation have laid a solid material foundation for China’s social development, economic growth, people’s livelihood and national defense. Chinese highway constructors have even expanded along the Belt and Road Initiative to build highways, expressways and other infrastructure overseas.

With the application and popularization of Internet + technology, endowing highways with intelligence and pursuing efficiency through informatization have become the development direction of current highway construction and services. We will advance the construction of road network monitoring and emergency response platforms, formulate management systems for road network center work, as well as systems for platform operation, maintenance and emergency response, to achieve visible and controllable road network operation.

Smart highways are not only high-end infrastructure, but also a management philosophy and service model. They require the in-depth integration of engineering construction, maintenance management, road administration, safety emergency response, travel services and other sectors with modern information technology, forming a product form, management model and service standard with distinct modern characteristics. Smart highways elevate modern service levels to better serve the public; as administrative management and modern services fully adopt information technology for intelligent supervision, open and compatible smart highways will better facilitate people’s convenient and efficient travel.

Smart highways leverage modern information collection and transmission technologies to comprehensively, timely and accurately grasp dynamic information of the relevant industry, and strengthen industry supervision in a more scientific and humanized manner. Smart highways release real-time road traffic information, and are playing an increasingly important role in emergency rescue, highway overload control and daily maintenance.

How can our constructors and managers deliver the product and service of smart highways effectively? What difficulties arise in this process?

Positioned as an IoT industry expert in wireless communication, video and intelligent control, Guoxin Longxin (GL Technologies), based on years of experience in providing relevant solutions, summarizes two major challenges in the construction and service of smart highways:

1) Difficult Network Connectivity

Highway lines span long distances, and information networking is extremely challenging due to terrain and surrounding environmental constraints. Deploying wired optical fibers requires laying pipelines along the lines, and scattered monitoring points result in complex wiring construction, long construction cycles and high total investment. In some areas, wiring is completely unfeasible or prone to damage (man-made or vehicle collision). A wired + wireless networking approach is therefore the most suitable solution.

2) Difficult Power Supply

For rural highways, many locations requiring information points along the lines face severe or even insurmountable power supply difficulties. Without basic power supply, no high-tech systems can be deployed. Constructing new power cables involves huge investment and is susceptible to damage over time; a single cable disruption will disable a string of information points, making it impossible to guarantee 24/7 uninterrupted operation.

Faced with the challenges in the construction and service of smart highways, is there a one-stop solution to address power supply and network transmission for these discrete monitoring points?

Guoxin Longxin’s customized comprehensive solution for smart highways resolves the above challenges, primarily relying on the following systems:

1. iPower2000 Off-grid Lithium Solar Power Supply System: Solving power unavailability at partial information points

The iPower2000 is a customized solar power supply system. This product series addresses the long-term or temporary power supply needs of scattered monitoring points and information collection points along the extensive smart highway network. Based on a lithium battery-powered main unit and high-performance monocrystalline silicon solar panels, the system boasts advantages of simple structure, compact size, light weight and long service life compared with conventional lead-acid or gel battery solar power systems. Its targeted and innovative design makes it ideally suited for the application of IT systems in outdoor environments.

Typical applications of the lithium solar power supply system are as follows:

2. iMAX Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) Private System: Outdoor Ultra-long-distance Wireless Network System

Basic network interconnection is a prerequisite for highway line management, and a real-time high-bandwidth network communication system is also indispensable. However, for most existing highway lines, optical cables are either unavailable or owned by telecom operators. Self-built optical cables entail extremely high construction costs; leasing optical cables means bearing substantial annual line rental fees in the later stage, which becomes an unaffordable operational burden for the system.

Clearly, the most economical and feasible solution is to make a one-time investment in deploying an outdoor ultra-long-distance wireless transmission system at access points to replace part of the optical cables for data aggregation, while building a self-owned backbone network or leasing operator optical cables for the backbone transmission.

Road video surveillance (including road condition monitoring, electronic police, electronic checkpoints, etc.) is the most widely used application in the upgrading construction and management of smart highways. For such road video surveillance applications, two core requirements must be met:First, the transmission link needs to support the stable transmission of high-definition video and ensure video fluency and stability. Mid-to-low-end wireless devices retrofitted with boards adopting the 802.11 series WiFi protocol can hardly meet the stringent link stability requirements for long-distance, real-time and stable transmission of high-definition video, leading to video issues such as jitter, trailing, freezing and mosaic; in extreme cases, the video becomes completely unusable.Second, security surveillance along highways operates in harsh and remote environments with difficult maintenance. Low-quality mid-to-low-end wireless products are prone to malfunctions due to environmental factors such as extreme temperatures, lightning, wind and rain, and corrosion, resulting in system downtime—a major headache for users and managers.

Therefore, the high-capacity, high-quality and cost-effective iMAX wireless MAN system is the optimal choice for deployment along smart highways.

The networking diagram of the iMAX wireless MAN private system applied in smart highways is as follows:

The iMAX wireless communication system is engineered to build wireless cities and address outdoor ultra-long-distance network communication needs, with all product series boasting an extended communication range. Among them, the iMAX-6000 series serves as the urban backbone network, and various iMAX-8000 series products function as the urban access network.

✅ Communication Range

Under line-of-sight (LOS) conditions, even the compact integrated-antenna devices of the iMAX 5G dedicated communication system can easily achieve a transmission radius of 10 km. Some products support point-to-point line-of-sight communication up to 100 km, perfectly meeting the ultra-long-distance networking demands of highway monitoring systems.

✅ Transmission Bandwidth

The iMAX-8000H is a 600 Mbps point-to-multipoint MAN system, and the iMAX-6000 series offers point-to-point communication at 150/300/600 Mbps. Bandwidth can be scaled N-fold through technologies such as VRRP, fully satisfying the networking requirements of highway monitoring systems.

✅ Dedicated Private Network

The iMAX 5G dedicated communication system is a custom-designed wireless MAN private network. Through demand research and tailored customization, it delivers a reliable and stable networking solution for users with no recurring link rental or data package fees. Featuring high performance and robust security, it is ideally suited for private network construction in highway scenarios.

The greatest advantage of the wireless private network solution is one-time investment with no ongoing costs for optical cable leasing, dedicated line rental or data packages. It also offers high bandwidth, superior cost-effectiveness, strong security and reliability, easy expansion and upgrade, simple management and maintenance, and can play a critical role in emergency scenarios.

Network communication along smart highways has unique characteristics: simple daisy-chain or star networking topologies are not applicable due to the ultra-long distances involved. Custom research and design are required based on actual needs, together with comprehensive frequency planning. Success relies not only on high-performance, reliable products, but also on strong technical capabilities and rich project experience—core strengths that Guoxin Longxin has built through years of industry expertise.

3. iMAX 4G Dual-mode Wireless System: SD-CX Cloud Switching + VPN Virtual Private Network Solution

For highway administrative authorities and large highway operators, wireless private network technology only addresses single-section private network construction. However, monitoring points are often scattered across an entire city or even province, and centralized management of these points requires wireless wide area network (WWAN) technology. Drawing on years of invaluable IoT industry experience, Guoxin Longxin presents a solution combining cloud switching and multi-mode gateways.

A cloud computing platform (or cloud platform) provides computing, networking and storage capabilities based on hardware and software resource services. It is categorized into three types: storage-centric cloud platforms, computing-centric cloud platforms, and integrated cloud platforms supporting both computing and storage. With the evolution of cloud computing, nearly every enterprise is adopting or planning to adopt cloud services, which include three deployment models: public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud.

The cloud exists “on the cloud”—how to connect on-site business to the cloud? Public cloud typically uses the Internet (e.g., operator broadband access), while private cloud adopts VPN or dedicated line access (e.g., telecom operator dedicated lines, self-built optical fibers or wireless private networks). As a dedicated, isolated network, private cloud offers significantly higher bandwidth, reliability and security than regular broadband. Both public and private cloud face the challenge of edge node cloud access.

Guoxin Longxin’s iMWB-5GW1000 multi-mode wireless gateway and iMAX-4GW300 series 4G MAN dual-mode wireless gateway system are powerful tools for cloud access of edge nodes in cloud computing.

Taking the iMAX-4GW300 as an example, it supports both iMAX wireless MAN and 4G LTE technologies, with multiple Ethernet ports serving as a multi-network convergence gateway. For wireless communication, it leverages wireless private network technology for high bandwidth, reliability and capacity, while also supporting 4G LTE access via telecom operator public networks, flexibly delivering optimal wireless networking solutions for users.

The iMAX-4GW300 is an innovative product that uniquely integrates iMAX wireless MAN and 4G LTE technologies. It acts as an integrated switching gateway platform supporting diverse access methods, including optical fiber access (with Guoxin Longxin FiberDC-IDU), LAN interconnection, MPLS dedicated line access, residential Internet broadband access, iMAX wireless MAN private network, and 4G Internet access. Its strength lies in supporting multi-network convergence and interconnection, ideal for scenarios with widely distributed sites and diverse public network connection methods.

✅ Security & Stability Assurance

Security and stability are primarily guaranteed by Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology, which establishes a dedicated network over a public network (or encrypted tunnels over a private network) for secure encrypted communication. VPN relies on tunnel encryption protocols, with typical options including PPTP, L2TP and IPSec. Guoxin Longxin’s solution is built on an embedded hardware VPN architecture (VPN server + VPN gateway), ensuring superior reliability and security for remote management and maintenance.

For networking of remote monitoring systems along highways, the cloud-based Internet solution offers the best cost-effectiveness and applicability. Users with high security requirements can choose a private cloud; those with moderate requirements can opt for public or hybrid cloud. Scattered monitoring points are integrated into a virtual private network over the WAN via VPN tunnel encryption technology.

The topology diagram of Guoxin Longxin’s virtual private network solution for highway monitoring is as follows:

Guoxin Longxin’s SD-CX Cloud Interconnection Solution enables centralized monitoring and management for highways. The network-accessible devices supported include but are not limited to servers, switches, IP cameras, PLCs, sensors, IP broadcasting equipment, advertising screens, wireless communication devices and optical communication devices. To a certain extent, all devices managed based on the TCP/IP network can achieve remote centralized networking through this solution. In other words, various intelligent systems commonly used in highway monitoring can all be carried on this system, which undoubtedly builds a highly scalable platform for highway operators or regulatory authorities to further advance intelligent construction.

It is important to emphasize that the iMAX-4GW300 also supports routing, firewall and VPN technologies, providing users with a variety of secure technical means to meet the security requirements for business networking, especially when connecting to the public network. Networking through this device can effectively prevent network security issues such as hacker intrusion caused by “exposed connection” on the Internet. This solution is suitable for highway monitoring scenarios with a small number of scattered monitoring points.

Based on years of accumulated technical strength and project experience, Guoxin Longxin can tailor-make the most suitable wireless monitoring system and provide the optimal solution for users.

订阅评论

0 Comments

最旧