Passenger Information System for Bus and Rail: Connected, Containerized, Centrally Managed.

A passenger information system (PIS) keeps passengers up to date with timetables, delays, connections and disruption notices. Traditionally that happens through displays and announcements in the vehicle. This onboard PIS is usually a system of its own and is not integrated into the captive portal of the passenger Wi-Fi. The Unwired Edge Cloud does not make displays or onboard computers; it is the cloud-based platform underneath. It does two things. First, the Journey Widget in the captive portal puts delays, connections and a Moving Map on every passenger’s smartphone; it gets that data through a feed from the operator’s ITCS. Second, Unwired Edge Compute is the platform on which you run your PIS vendor’s software directly on the vehicle router, provided it is delivered as a container; WAN bonding and VPN connect it to the control center and the AVLS. Both are managed and monitored centrally in the Unwired Edge Cloud.

The market splits into three groups. Hardware vendors supply the onboard computers, displays and PA systems in the vehicle. Software providers for ITCS and control centers deliver timetable and real-time data and control what gets shown. The third group are platforms for connectivity and operations, which connect, run and monitor those components in the vehicle. The Unwired Edge Cloud belongs to the third group: it brings passenger information to smartphones through the captive portal of the passenger Wi-Fi and is the platform on which operators run PIS software as a container on the vehicle router, vendor-agnostic. For the PIS software itself, Unwired works with solution partners such as ETC Solutions and Interautomation. When you compare options, four questions are worth asking. Does it have open interfaces, so timetable and real-time data can come from your existing ITCS? Can you roll it out to the whole fleet centrally, or does every vehicle need to be configured by hand? Are passenger traffic and onboard applications separated in the in-vehicle network? And how long does the software receive security updates?

For passenger information in the passenger Wi-Fi, a vehicle router or access point running Unwired Edge Cloud OS is all it takes; passengers use their own smartphones. Supported devices come from several vendors, including Netmodule/Belden, Teltonika and Televic/GSP, and you can mix them. If the PIS software is to run as a container, you need a router with enough processing power; a separate onboard computer is no longer required. Displays and PA systems remain the PIS vendor’s domain and connect through the in-vehicle network. Unwired can supply the hardware together with the service, so you need no infrastructure of your own on site.

Yes, in two ways. The fastest is the passenger Wi-Fi. Vehicles that already have a router running Unwired Edge Cloud OS get the Journey Widget in the captive portal through a configuration change in the Unwired Edge Cloud. No rewiring, no technician in the vehicle. The second way is the container: if your PIS software runs as an OCI/Docker container, it is rolled out over the air to the existing router, provided the router has enough power. Existing displays stay connected through the in-vehicle network. Routers from other vendors can often keep running on Unwired Edge Cloud OS; the list of supported hardware shows which devices are supported.

Through the Journey Widget. It pulls timetable and real-time data from the operator’s systems over an API and shows delays, connections and the vehicle’s position on the Moving Map for each trip. You decide in the CMS which widgets appear in the portal and how they look, no programming skills needed. Add news, videos or POI content there, or pull them in from external sources. The portal is rolled out centrally and kept up to date with current browsers and devices.

That depends on the setup. With Unwired CloudLink, the router bundles several cellular and satellite connections through WAN bonding; if one network fails, traffic carries on over the others, and a full drop becomes rare. If every uplink does drop, a PIS container in the vehicle keeps running; it only needs the connection for new real-time data and updates. If the Onboard Portal is in use, the captive portal stays reachable too, because its content sits on the vehicle router; delay data refreshes as soon as an uplink is back. Afterwards, the observability of the Unwired Edge Cloud shows where and for how long the connection was missing, as input for network planning and SLA evidence.

No, it complements them. Displays and announcements reach every passenger at once and are mandatory in many tenders. The captive portal reaches each passenger on their own smartphone with information about their trip: connections, delays, position, surroundings. It also adds things displays can’t do, such as a support form or holding a connection at the passenger’s request. Both run on the same infrastructure in the vehicle: router, uplink and in-vehicle network are installed once and used for passenger Wi-Fi and PIS alike, separated in their own VLANs. That way operators avoid running two parallel systems for Wi-Fi and onboard applications.