Smart City

Immersive smart bus waiting system lets urban and remote dwellers experience convenient and more

In 2017, Askey collaborated with Taipei City Government in launching “Smart Taipei Main Station” project to build the custom “Smart Bus Stop” for residents, which not only provides accurate real-time bus information, but also integrates across domains to provide services such as free 4G Wi-Fi, USB charging, EasyCard balance inquiry, weather forecast, environmental index monitoring, etc., based on different bus stops’ requirements.

Recently, we even launched solar-powered bus stops, a painless implementation for remote villages and areas where is inconvenient to supply electricity. By high-capacity batteries, the bus stops can be operated for 14 days continuously in environments with insufficient sunlight. With electronic paper display, bus information system is easy to read and energy-efficient. In the future, functions such as Wi-Fi hot spots will be introduced on demand to offer residents a new waiting experience. 

Askey continues to develop smart transportation, and has since collaborated with Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taichung City, Tainan City, Chiayi County, Pingtung County and Kinmen County in Taiwan in launching various types of smart bus stop solutions, and providing technologies and services to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, one of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. With more than 30 years of experience in Netcom equipment manufacturing, Askey has transformed the business model from a make-to-order production to a solutions provider in building a smart city. During the research and development process, we care user experience with the aim of helping all users commute across cities conveniently. Through allying with other partners, we enable to provide the smart city solutions to the world. 

Travel and store navigation at your fingertips with indoor navigation APP

Taipei Main Station is a joint station serving six transportation systems; it is an important hub for visitors commuting. With the successive completion and operation of MRT, High Speed Rail, Taoyuan Airport MRT system, bus interchanges, and the changes in urban activities, there has been an increase in facilities within Taipei Main Station resulting in the complexness for pedestrians’ movement. To improve the navigation in Taipei Main Station, integrated with urban landscape and disaster prevention planning aiming at becoming a smart city, we collaborates with Taipei City Government in launching “Taipei Station Navi”, an indoor navigation App which adopts low-energy beacons to position the visitors’ locations and provides functions such as indoor positioning and navigation, transportation information, food and shop guide, smart parking, information push, etc. 

After downloading this App, users can position themselves and navigate to any location within the station. The App also provides friendly notices at stairways to remind you to go upstairs or downstairs. You can also use the App to locate any place such as parking lot, restaurant, shop, toilet and emergency exit in Taipei Main Station. We recently implemented augmented reality (AR) navigation for a whole new experience to allow users to view on their devices for the real-time navigation path, shop information, etc. 

Civil IoT

Civil IoT Taiwan project is an application and Open Data Platform built by the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC), the Ministry of Science and Technology, to promote the disaster prevention system. It integrates the sensors of air quality, water resource, and earthquake in sensor stations of infrustration for developing a smart disaster prevention analysis and improving the government smart emergency preparedness and response/decision-making. Askey is in charge of the sub-project, “Construction of the Backbone Network Infrastructure of Civil IoT”, for designing and building Civil IoT’s dedicated LTE/Cat-M1 backbone network with FDD Upstream and downstream 5MHz spectrum of PPDR B20, 816-821/857-862 MHz. It is a locally built public IoT access network owned by the country. By making use of the advantages of small cell integration development, we provide end-to-end enterprise private network solutions, the system equipment integration and building and maintenance services as follows:

• LTE core network and network management system.
• Embedded LTE UE relay function in B20 LTE/Cat-M1 small cell.
• Inclusion or extension of receiving range of IoT connected devices, such as IoT Gateway, BT mesh receiver, etc.
• Provide construction and system integration services for core network equipment and small cell system.
• Manage system integration and provide operation support of B20 Small Cell GW UE Relay through AMP/HeMS.
• Manage LTE HSS/EPC core network equipment (including HSS/MME/PGW/SGW Server) and provide operation support through EMS.
• Assist in supply, installation and management of HSS SIM Card and support the correspondent operational accounting and customer service management system.
• Integrate IPSec Tunnel Provisioning between the base station and core network equipment through SeGW.
• First to provide FOA validation service of integrated testing and support follow-up maintenance and technical obstacle solving.
• Provide core network integration services for 1000 pieces B20 LTE/CAT-M1 Small Cell GW UE Relay.

The project’s added-value applications make use of NCHC cloud platform, and are in line with the added-value computing of AI tools developed by the NCHC. The access network not only adopts Cat-M1 technologies for networking, but also LTE connection to transmit large volumes of data derived from AI applications (such as images to determine the height of flooding). In this project, Askey helps NCHC to become a Taiwanese version of AWS, which provides a cloud platform for AI applications, and plays the role of operating Taiwan state-owned network platform.