Bullet Train Upgrade Brings 5G Windows, Noise-Cancelling Cabins To Japan (theregister.com) 31
Some Japanese bullet trains will soon support premium private suites this October, featuring windows with embedded 5G antennas for steadier onboard Wi-Fi and NTT noise-cancelling cabin tech to reduce train noise. The 5G window antennas are designed to maintain line-of-sight connections as trains race past base stations at up to 285 km/h. The Register reports: Rail operator JR Central announced the new tech late last month and will initially deploy a couple of the suites on six trains. The carrier explained that the antennas come from a Japanese company called AGC that weaves microscopic wires through glass to form an antenna. JR Central will connect the windows to an on-train Wi-Fi router.
AGC says rival tech relies on 5G signals reaching a train and then bouncing around inside before reaching the Wi-Fi unit. The company says antennas woven into train windows maintain line of sight to nearby 5G base stations. That matters because JR Central's Shinkansen can achieve speeds of up to 285 km/h, which means they speed past cellular network base stations so quickly that it's frequently necessary to reconnect to another radio. AGC says keeping a line of sight connection means its antennas allow increased 5G signal strength, so Wi-Fi service on board trains should be more stable and speedy.
The sound-deadening kit JR Central will deploy is called Personalized Sound Zone (PSZ) and comes from Japan's tech giant NTT. The tech uses the same principles applied to noise-cancelling headphones -- determine the waveform of sound and project an inversion of that waveform that cancels out ambient noise.
AGC says rival tech relies on 5G signals reaching a train and then bouncing around inside before reaching the Wi-Fi unit. The company says antennas woven into train windows maintain line of sight to nearby 5G base stations. That matters because JR Central's Shinkansen can achieve speeds of up to 285 km/h, which means they speed past cellular network base stations so quickly that it's frequently necessary to reconnect to another radio. AGC says keeping a line of sight connection means its antennas allow increased 5G signal strength, so Wi-Fi service on board trains should be more stable and speedy.
The sound-deadening kit JR Central will deploy is called Personalized Sound Zone (PSZ) and comes from Japan's tech giant NTT. The tech uses the same principles applied to noise-cancelling headphones -- determine the waveform of sound and project an inversion of that waveform that cancels out ambient noise.
Remarkably quite already (Score:2, Interesting)
Riding on a bullettrain was one of the most disappointing experiences during my visit to Japan 20 years ago.
Racing with +260 km/h down the track but it was so damn quiet as if you were in a train going 20 km/h.
Re:Remarkably quite already (Score:4, Interesting)
This is actually tech that is built into the seat headrest, and supposed to be able to block sounds from the same room. So presumably it is not trying to quieten the already very quiet trains, but rather the other passengers.
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I rode on the Thalys train in France a few years ago. Looking out the window I could tell we were going pretty fast but it was so smooth I guessed maybe 160 kph. Turned on GPS and discovered how wrong I was. It was actually 300 kph.
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Not sure about current Thalys, but historically they are not the fasted.
Top speed for me from Karlsruhe/Germany to Paris and back was 370km/h.
I hope 5G Windows is better than Windows 11 (Score:4, Funny)
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I hope it is a decent upgrade, because I have to say that Shinkansen wifi is pretty terrible. It's slow and frequently drops out. It's bad enough that I don't bother with it and use my phone's own cellular connection.
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It's a plus (Score:3)
Re:It's a plus (Score:4, Informative)
Worth noting also that it is ludicrously cheap. Tokyo to Hiroshima on a Shinkansen costs around $100 and is 20% further than London to Edenborough which costs $129EUR (30% more expensive), takes 250% as long, and is 1000% more shit.
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Worth noting also that it is ludicrously cheap.
Actually, the Shinkansen is known to be expensive for the Japanese. But the yen is currently very low against US and European currencies, and coming from abroad it appears to be cheap.
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Even if the yen was twice what it is now (going back 15 years) it still is a far more compelling offer than the train I compared it to. It would be online slightly more expensive than a normal very shit train service, and for that you get a great experience and a significantly faster trip.
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That's because the regular JR regionals are even cheaper.
DeutschBahn (Score:2)
Meanwhile on DeutschBahn you are lucky if the train shows up at all and if the heating and a/c are working.
DB has been officially tuning the statistics for years, despite all that effort in faking the numbers, the stats look worse than ever.
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Meanwhile in Japan: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com] apologies for running 20 seconds early.
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The trains are so reliable, not just the bullet trains, that if they are delayed by more than a few minutes they have a bit of paper you can collect and show to your boss so you don't get into trouble.
The bullet trains operate on a 15 second interval timetable, but the drivers typically try to arrive within 1 second of the advertised time. They have a system where they make up time by accelerating a little harder, so they never need to exceed the speed limit. They do the calculations in their head to figure
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so the communication systems with the train have to be extremely reliable
Fun fact, globally rail control and safety systems have reliability requirements equivalent to operation of nuclear reactors. That's typically 2-3 orders of magnitude more reliable than something like the ABS system in a car, or most safety systems in a typical refinery or chemical plant (actually a full order of magnitude more reliable than the highest rated safety systems recognised by international standards for the process industry).
When things go wrong in a train they go very wrong. It's an insanely in
Re:DeutschBahn (Score:4, Interesting)
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Probably your phone logged into the railway's own network.
Did you actually use the phone, or did it only show G2/GSM?
Chances are, you would not have been able to use it.
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> Meanwhile on DeutschBahn you are lucky if the train shows up at all and if the heating and a/c are working.
My favourite experience is a broken A/C, but they couldn't shut it off. So outside 30C+, and in the carriage we were freezing our asses off in 15C (Train was completely full).
AGC page with more info (Score:3)
AGC used to be called Asahi Glass and has been one of the world leaders in functionality glass for a long time and though I don’t know a ton about them have admired their innovations.They’ve been making glass antennas of one kind or another since at least 2022 according to Google. Here is a page I found that discusses this product. https://www.agc-automotive.com... [agc-automotive.com]
Wondering if .. (Score:2)
they speed past cellular network base stations so quickly that it's frequently necessary to reconnect to another radio.
These are NOT upgrades (Score:1, Funny)
We're talking about the Shinkansen here; that's a high bar. Upgrades actually worth of the term would include:
Mach speeds
*Flight* (think Galaxy Express)
A mortality rate even lower than zero - most likely through the spontaneous generation of schoolgirls (like in William Gibson's Idoru)
Why the windows? (Score:2)
Why is an antenna build into the window better then one on the outside of the train?
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Why is an antenna build into the window better then one on the outside of the train?
The metal skin of the train isn't RF transparent. The windows are. If you have to install a blister with the antenna, it adds to the drag of the train. Which either slows it down, or increases operating costs to overcome.
It's a little harder to build, but if you can, it's win-win.
Availability will be quite limited, though. (Score:2)
I think when JR Central introduces these new modified 700S Series train sets, they will likely cater specifically to business passengers willing to pay for more comfortable seating. As such, trains will run on the "Nozomi" trains that run only between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka stations.
Is this a sex thing? (Score:2)
You'll know.