The UIC interface according to the UIC-558 and UIC-568 norms is a standard that has been in use in the railway market for decades. Due to the simple design and the robust behaviour of UIC, the interface is still frequently used as a redundancy.
VoIP-SIP
The digital communication standard VoIP-SIP has been introduced several years ago and is also becoming a standard in the railway sector. On one hand, this enables an easy connection of additional clients and therefore a freely scalable system, and on the other hand, the voice quality remains consistent even over longer distances, when multi traction have been used.
Situation
Given the long investment cycles in the rail sector, it is common for vehicles with new VoIP-SIP based systems to be operated in mixed traction with older vehicles. These older vehicles often communicate via a conventional UIC interface. In order to implement such mixed operation, a conversion from VoIP-SIP to UIC and vice versa is required. For this conversion from analogue to digital the universal Communication Box uCOB2200 can be used.
Gateway
The uCOB2200 has a full UIC audio interface, which allows to establish full duplex calls on the UIC-3/4 lines, as well as audio announcements over the UIC-1/2 lines. Through the LAN interface the received calls can be converted from the UIC interface into a SIP telephone call and distributed as defined.
The device registers itself as a normal SIP client at the SIP Server and by means of configuration, corresponding telephone calls can be placed on the UIC-1/2 or UIC-3/4 lines. Thus, the uCOB2200 functions as a complete UIC to VoIP-SIP gateway, which can be used in many ways.
