The highly-discussed Beijing Daxing International Airport terminal, which has garnered attention from media and online discussions, is scheduled for completion and acceptance on June 30, 2019, with operations commencing before September 30 of the same year. It is considered the world's most challenging terminal in terms of construction technology, earning the title of the "first of the new Seven Wonders of the World" by The Guardian, a British newspaper. Daxing International Airport is situated on the north bank of the Yongding River, covering an area of 1.4 million square meters. With an investment of 80 billion RMB, it took four years to construct and, upon completion, will be the world's largest standalone airport. Once fully operational, it will feature nine runways, accommodating a passenger throughput of 130 million and handling 1.03 million aircraft takeoffs and landings.
Feng Zhenglin, the director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, stated during the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference that Daxing International Airport is built according to the standards of a new era for large-scale international modern airports. These standards include being a safe, green, smart, and human-oriented airport, consistently prioritizing the passenger experience and establishing the country's first three-dimensional, flawless, and seamlessly connected comprehensive transportation system.
For Daxing International Airport, dedicated to achieving the highest standards, the airport's public address (PA) system is one of its most crucial operational systems. The PA system serves as the primary platform for the airport and airlines to convey information to passengers and is also a key aspect of passengers' direct experience with the airport.
The airport's PA system is a comprehensive engineering system that integrates IT information technology with large-scale hall electronic sound reinforcement. Its characteristics include multiple sound sources, numerous audio output channels, diverse forms of business broadcasting, high concurrent performance requirements, and complex priority management. Additionally, the PA system involves multiple user departments, dispersed user operation areas, and a diverse and complex engineering interface, imposing high demands on the stability and functionality of the broadcast system. Given the airport's focus on the passenger experience, selecting a PA system that provides a perfect experience for passengers is crucial. In response, Daxing International Airport has put forward ten requirements.
After a rigorous selection process, the intelligent airport solution provided by PCI (Q-SYS™) emerged as the chosen solution for Daxing International Airport, standing out among numerous competitors. The solution utilizes a comprehensive cabling system and network system as the control and data transmission platform. It centralizes the processing of dispersed audio source signals through the network and distributes them to CXD-Q network power amplifiers in various broadcast control rooms. This, in turn, drives the speakers of various business broadcasting zones through a pressure control method, meeting the airport's intelligent broadcasting needs, including automatic broadcasting, manual broadcasting, emergency broadcasting, and fire emergency broadcasting.
Why did PCI's solution stand out among numerous competitors?
Q-SYS™ Ecosystem
PCI's intelligent airport solution for Beijing Daxing International Airport is centered around the QSC Q-SYS™ ecosystem from the United States. It comprises four QSC Core 3100 mainframes and over 100 Q-SYS network paging stations, CXD-Q 8-channel network power amplifiers, and other equipment.
Advantages and Features
Advanced and Scalable
Q-SYS is an open and IT-friendly ecosystem developed by the American company QSC based on a software platform. Its uniqueness lies in leveraging the powerful processing capabilities of Intel chips, the robustness and reliability of the Linux operating system, and the interoperability of IEEE network standards. This IT-based design allows the Q-SYS ecosystem to effortlessly utilize the Intel platform, continuously upgrading to faster chipsets and other IT hardware devices. Additionally, the Q-SYS ecosystem uses standard IT protocols, providing high scalability and compatibility for future IT functionalities and platforms.
The automatic broadcast voice interface of the Q-SYS ecosystem adopts dynamic routing allocation for audio channels, significantly optimizing channel management for business systems. During the initial design phase, users only need to consider the maximum broadcast concurrency, ensuring that each channel for automatic business broadcasting operates optimally.
The CORE host is the processing core of the Q-SYS ecosystem, where all audio signal processing, routing, and control signals take place. The CORE host departs from the traditional method of using DSP chips for audio signal processing in audio processing hosts, instead opting for a new audio processing core – a multi-core 64-bit central processing unit. With this new processing engine, the signal processing capability of the CORE host far exceeds that of traditional audio processing hosts using DSP chips as the processing core.
In addition to supporting a single-machine management mode, the Q-SYS ecosystem, through communication between Core hosts, also supports intercommunication between multiple hosts and systems. In a network, disregarding the limitations of network bandwidth, the Q-SYS ecosystem's audio channel transmission quantity is essentially unlimited. In some super-large projects, communication between Core hosts allows the construction of composite systems (System of System), enabling the system to handle an almost infinite number of channels.
Openness and Flexibility
The Q-SYS ecosystem adopts a centralized management, decentralized control architecture based on three-layer Ethernet technology. All system devices are directly or through interface devices connected to the audio system's dedicated gigabit Ethernet. The network audio transmission protocols include Q-LAN and AES67, and through hardware expansion, it supports mainstream network audio transmission protocols such as CobraNet, Dante, and AVB. Control signal transmission uses the TCP/IP protocol, creating a low-latency, high-quality, real-time network audio platform.
The Q-SYS ecosystem distributes audio, control, and video through IEEE standard Ethernet/IP networks. Q-LAN ensures a system delay (analog input to analog output) of 3.167ms. Furthermore, Q-SYS Core hosts support VoIP, SIP, LDAP, TCP/IP, and HTTP web servers.
In the Q-SYS ecosystem, to simplify the complex programming work of traditional control systems, graphical programming language Blocky and script language LUA were introduced first, along with numerous integrated control plugins (Plug-ins), significantly reducing the difficulty of control programming and development cycles. For scenarios with diverse control business functions and interface requirements, such as airports, the built-in LUA language can be used to greatly supplement and optimize the system according to actual needs, meeting the practical business system requirements with Chinese characteristics.
In the renovation of new and old terminals, the pain point for many airport projects lies in the audio communication and priority control management between terminals. The Q-SYS ecosystem, with its diverse audio interfaces, control interfaces, and flexible programming, can simplify the complex implementation of communication processes, making it easy and reliable to meet the requirements of non-stop flight renovations.
Safety and Reliability
The Q-SYS ecosystem supports comprehensive device monitoring, automatic system fault alarms, and offers four hot backup methods, enabling rapid recovery to normal operation in the event of a system failure causing business interruption.
Core Host Backup
The system allows for the simultaneous presence of two Core hosts. Regardless of the reason for the main Core going offline, the backup Core can automatically activate and take over the system.
Network Backup
Achieving network backup is as simple as adding switches and cables. In the event of a main network failure, the Q-SYS system can instantly switch to the backup network.
I/O Frame Interface Box Backup
In critical locations, designers can choose to create backups for input/output interface boxes, enhancing system reliability.
System-wide Backup
The Q-SYS system supports backups for the network, system processing host, input/output interface boxes, and power amplifiers, effectively preventing system paralysis caused by individual device failures.
In terms of security, the Q-SYS Designer system management software includes a user security management module that allows for the configuration of user accounts for system and call station use. User accounts include usernames, user information such as passwords, and user permissions.
When the QSC amplifier works in conjunction with the Q-SYS ecosystem, adding an amplifier failover device allows for the switching of up to 8 main amplifiers and 1 backup amplifier. This means that a single power amplifier can backup up to 8 power amplifiers.
Amplifier Fault Detection Mechanism:
The solution employs the CXD-Q power amplifier, fully integrated into the Q-SYS ecosystem. The Core host can obtain the working status of the power amplifier through the network, including parameters such as temperature, protection, clipping, on/off, gain, and more. The system can make judgments and switch before a power amplifier failure occurs.
Amplifier Switching Execution Actions:
When the Core host decides to switch the amplifier, it notifies the amplifier failover device via the network through the interface machine and issues an alert on the operator workstation. The amplifier failover device is a purely hardware execution device, ensuring safety and reliability even in the event of a power outage.
Openness and Flexibility:
Traditional systems often struggle to manage and control all devices in the system, with operations lacking user-friendliness, especially in large systems. Q-SYS ecosystem overcomes these challenges, providing intuitive and graphical interfaces for real-time monitoring of various system components, including Core host operation, input/output interface box status, call station status, and touch control screen.
For QSC Dataport interface-switched power amplifiers or CXD-Q network amplifiers, remote control and monitoring are possible through the Q-SYS ecosystem, allowing adjustments to post-level volume and comprehensive control of input/output interface boxes.
The system offers detailed monitoring and control functions, such as adjustable input/output levels, volume monitoring, data flow visualization, mute handling, and dynamic real-time displays of system status for broadcast zones and digital audio matrices. In case of system equipment or line failures, corresponding screens can display the nature and location of faults promptly.
The speaker circuit detection function relies on the impedance detection feature of the amplifier. The amplifier continuously monitors the impedance of each speaker circuit in real-time. If an abnormal impedance is detected in any circuit, the amplifier sends an alert directly to the Q-SYS ecosystem over the network, specifying which circuit is experiencing issues. All alerts, fault nature, and specific fault locations are promptly displayed on the system management server and can be printed as needed.
User-Friendly Operation
Q-SYS Designer is the complementary application software for the Q-SYS system, serving as the software tool for designing, configuring, and controlling the Q-SYS system. Despite its powerful features, the software is incredibly user-friendly. Even for the most complex audio systems, designers find it intuitive and easy to use for design and configuration. The system management, on the other hand, provides a concise, orderly, yet robust control interface.
Q-SYS Designer offers all the tools needed for configuring, operating, and maintaining the system to ensure that the audio system operates at optimal performance. It also enhances the Q-SYS ecosystem to be more intuitive and powerful. Using the system management software Q-SYS Designer, users can customize graphical control interfaces, incorporating various graphic elements such as .Jpg files as the background for control interfaces. Buttons, faders, level meters, tables, text, and other interface elements can be combined to create graphical control interfaces.
Cost-Effectiveness
The Q-SYS ecosystem achieves a bandwidth utilization rate of up to 90% in Gigabit Ethernet, enabling a single Q-SYS unit to support 512 channels of low-latency, high-quality audio signals. In the Beijing New Airport project, the Core3100 core processing unit was utilized, supporting 512 audio input channels and 512 audio output channels through a single network port. The amplifiers used belong to the CXD-Q 8-channel series, which are Class D amplifiers, saving 80% more energy compared to traditional analog amplifiers. This significantly reduces power consumption costs, aligning with national and corporate strategies for energy conservation and emission reduction.
In terms of rack resource utilization, the devices used in the Q-SYS ecosystem tend to be standardized and compact. For example, a single Core3100 unit can manage a maximum of 512 inputs and 512 outputs, incorporating various audio processing modules internally, such as crossovers, mixers, automatic mixers, noise gates, routers, dynamic processors, noise generators, parametric/graphic equalizers, dynamic displays, audio file players, RTA testing tools, and more. With each unit occupying 4U, a total of 16U of rack space is needed to centrally manage the broadcasting system of a 1.4 million square meter terminal. In various aggregation rooms, hundreds of 8-channel network digital amplifiers are deployed to manage over 700 speaker circuits. The high integration and compact size of digital amplifiers significantly save rack resources in equipment rooms.
The Q-SYS ecosystem fully meets the current and future functional requirements of the Beijing Daxing International Airport, ensuring the security, reliability, timeliness, accuracy, and completeness of system information processing and transmission. This enhances work efficiency, reduces human errors, and lowers operational costs.
