System integration made easy for Chinese subway line

How Guangzhou Metro Line in China connected various monitoring equipment to ControlNet using solutions from Rockwell Automation and the Anybus Communicator from HMS Industrial Networks.

The Guangzhou Metro Line 5 spans 40 kilometers east to west through Guangzhou City. The line includes 24 stations and has a capacity of transporting a whopping 50 million passengers per day.

Like all modern subway lines, the Guangzhou Metro Line 5 has a comprehensive monitoring system overlooking ventilation, air conditioning, water supply, drainage, elevators etc.

One part of the monitoring system is the so called "BAS system" — a PLC-based system connecting a substantial amount of monitoring devices and sub-systems. Since many of these devices and sub-systems are based on different protocols, Guangzhou Metro needed to find a solution to allow communication between these different devices and the BAS system. They found that the serial gateway Anybus Communicator was just the right product for the job.

The challenge
The Guangzhou Metro Line 5 system has numerous points with large amounts of data. The comprehensive monitoring system has a total of about 210,000 I/O points. The entire project was forecasted to contain 280,000 points, of which 70,000 points were allocated to the BAS system. Consequently, system integration required a great deal of work and deadlines were tight – 24 stations were to be simultaneously opened. Indeed, never before in the country had so many stations been opened at one time.

The BAS system was implemented one month before Guangzhou Metro Line 5 was successfully commissioned. The system integration was carried out by Beijing-based HollySys Automation Technologies. Project Manager Mr. Zhao Feng stated the following when officially opening the system to operation:
“Each of the sub-systems goes through the Anybus Serial Gateway to access the BAS system. This allowed monitoring and linkage between mechanical/electrical equipment and systems. In all, the Anybus Serial Gateway improved the monitoring capabilities of electrical and mechanical equipment on the subway — improving safety and stability."

About Anybus Communicator
The Anybus Communicator is a family of protocol converters that connect industrial devices to all major industrial networks (PROFIBUS, PROFINET, DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP, ControlNet, Modbus, CC-Link etc). The Communicator is capable of converting almost any standard or user specific proprietary protocol without the need for any hardware or software changes. The connection is configured in a PC-based configuration software without any programming needed.

Caption:
The Guangzhou Metro and HMS’s Anybus Communicator ControlNet for ControlNet.

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