Comparing to the traditional railway and highway transportation, new-generation IT is emphasized in new-type infrastructure. In the future, smart, information-based rail transit systems with 5G will be the mainstream of urban rail transit in smart cities.

The application of IT electronics for rail transit is comprehensive, including inter-car information transmission, railway signaling system control, in-car, station video monitoring system, passenger information system, automatic fare collection (AFC) system, and clearing system. For example, taking the inter-car information transmission, Nuvoton’s NUC980 can transform a serial port into an Ethernet serial host for inter-car information transmission over Ethernet. Information can include departure and destination, speed, and real-time status. The serial host can transmit data to the serial interface to display data on the in-car LED display via the M0 or M4 microcontroller.

The NUC980also supports data transmission and receiving via the Ethernet port or USB wireless module for the in-car or station public address (PA) system by transmitting information from the control center to the voice decoder over the I2S interface on the NUC980 for public address.

In-car or station monitoring system can be achieved by the N9H26 series equipped with the CMOS camera interface for on-site surveillance and video compression before transmitting data over Ethernet for operations staff to capture the real-time in-car and station status.

Besides the above examples, following the diversification of transportation development, including the power supply system, maintenance system, and rail environment surveillance system, which are part of the overall transportation engineering system, and the acceleration of 5G development and IoT application, it is believed that rail transit will provide more opportunities for microcontrollers and microprocessors applications in line with the future development of new infrastructure.