Sangoma helps RideOnTrack connect legacy and IP systems for safer, smarter railway operations

The Customer

RideOnTrack is a Belgian company specializing in providing advanced communication solutions for mission-critical networks. It serves the railway, public safety, air traffic control, police, and military sectors. Its products include voice recording, gateways, fixed VoIP operational telephony, and call management. In addition to these products, RideOnTrack designs custom solutions as required by most integration projects.

Business Challenges

Mission-critical service organizations are being called upon to modernize their infrastructure to meet growing security and safety requirements. Limited budgets push them to adopt and migrate to IP-based communication solutions. In these large networks, many telecommunications solutions based on different standards coexist, making the migration period lengthy and sometimes spanning several years. This requires support for multiple protocols.

A concrete example is Infrabel, the Belgian railway infrastructure provider, which had to migrate to IP (SIP). Infrabel chose RideOnTrack for its fixed operational communication solutions. RideOnTrack’s challenge was that Infrabel, like many mission-critical organizations, has many legacy systems that cannot connect directly to IP solutions without analog / TDM to IP conversion. For example, they record voice calls to improve operations, train employees, and retain legal records for emergency situations. Although some calls are made via IP devices, many remain on legacy TDM communication systems. RideOnTrack therefore had to build a bridge between the old and new worlds of communication, and called on Sangoma’s expertise in this area.

Another challenge RideOnTrack faced was replacing all of Infrabel’s trackside multiplexers, which were used to connect analog telephones, radios, and alarm systems trackside to communicate with their IP (SIP) solution. These devices are generally used by track workers, train drivers, or, in emergencies, to manually control train movements. The analog telephones connect to RideOnTrack’s SIP/IP dispatcher at the control center. Usually, a gateway device is used to translate between the old and new worlds (in this case, an analog‑SIP gateway). But these trackside telephones were located up to 12 km from their multiplexers, were subject to EMI interference when trains passed, and these unique gateway requirements are not always supported by traditional vendors.

Sangoma Solutions

To address these challenges, RideOnTrack collaborated with Sangoma Technologies to ensure that legacy telecom equipment could coexist with its IP (SIP) counterparts. For Infrabel’s voice recording needs, RideOnTrack chose Sangoma’s A‑series E1 PCIe telephony cards, which proved highly compatible and flexible and worked with its software. Combined with RideOnTrack’s software, these telephony cards were integrated into gateway platforms that could interact simultaneously with ISDN, CAS, QSIG, and the IP (SIP) world. With configurations available from 1 x E1 up to 16 x E1 on a single PCIe interface, Sangoma was able to provide a solution not only for Infrabel’s requirements but also for all of RideOnTrack’s fixed operational telephony needs.

To solve the challenge of replacing all trackside multiplexers connected to analog phones, RideOnTrack used Sangoma Vega 3000 VoIP gateways. Each gateway can connect up to 50 analog phones located up to 12 km from the access point and connect directly to their IP solutions (SIP). RideOnTrack worked closely with Sangoma’s R&D team to design special software/firmware to manage EMI interference caused by trains and degraded line conditions. “These VoIP gateways are the ideal solution for our client Infrabel, which has trackside analog phones up to 12 kilometers from the IP network and experiences severe EMI interference when trains pass. These Vega VoIP gateways enabled us to win a 2016 tender to replace all of Infrabel’s old trackside analog multiplexers.”

The Results

Sangoma has proven to be a leading strategic partner for RideOnTrack, and thanks to its continued success with Infrabel, they are now deploying Sangoma A‑series telephony cards in all their voice recording and gateway products. “Sangoma’s products have enabled us to offer solutions to all organizations that need fixed operational communications, such as railways, public safety, police, fire brigades, 911, and airport navigation.”

The implementation of the Vega 3000 family of VoIP gateways for trackside analog phones and devices has been a huge success and is used in all RideOnTrack projects requiring a high-performance SIP‑to‑Analog gateway that can tolerate poor line conditions and interference. Today, RideOnTrack continues to explore fixed operational communications opportunities around the world.