The Wireless Train Communication Network: Roll2Rail Vision

Abstract

This paper explains the main results obtained from the research carried out in the work package 2 (WP2) of the Roll2Rail (R2R) project. This project aims to develop key technologies and to remove already identified blocking points for radical innovation in the field of railway vehicles, to increase their operational reliability and to reduce life-cycle costs. This project started in May 2015 and has been funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission. The goal for WP2 is to research on both technologies and architectures to develop a new wireless Train Communication Network (TCN) within IEC61375 standard series. This TCN is today entirely wired and is used for Train Control and Monitoring System (TCMS) functions (some of them safetyrelated), operator-oriented services and customer-oriented services. This paradigm shift from wired to wireless means a removal of wirings implies, among other benefits, a significant reduction of life cycle costs due to the removal of cables, and the simplification of the train coupling procedure, among others. IntroductionRailways are evolving very rapidly to meet the increasing demands of its users. Rolling stock is a cornerstone in this development, but there are some blocking points that need to be addressed. This is the main purpose of the EU-funded Roll2Rail (R2R) Project. Work package 2 (WP2) is focused on communication issues (which is one of the most challenging fields in railways [1]), and its final objective is to specify the requirements (and validate in a laboratory) for a wireless train communication network (TCN), at least with the same performance as the wired one. This wireless TCN would be very helpful to design, manufacture, operate and maintain trains from LCC (Life-Cycle Costs) point of view and able to avoid a significant number of failures due to broken connectors and cables. The partners in this WP were fourteen of the most relevant railway companies (see Table I), working as a single one.The first task to meet this goal is to clarify the state-of-theart of both radio technologies and related initiatives [2]. This review considered radio technologies and services, not only in railways, but also in the aeronautic, industry and automotive fields. Some of them have proven to be very useful in certain aspects (like GSM-R for train-to-ground communications), but they are unlikely to meet the requirements in other aspects. 3GPP LTE [3] and the IEEE 802.11 standards (commonly known as WiFi) [4] completed with deterministic communication features are two of the technologies that were identified as potential choices for the R2R project. Cognitive radio [5] is also a suitable approach that can help to achieve some of the objectives.The structure of the paper is the following one: in section II the general requirements that a Wireless TCMS needs to meet are depicted; in section III it is provided a model for each one of the radio channels of the project; in section IV, the security and reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety (RAMS) issues are...

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