Integrated Public Mobile Radio Networks/Satellite for Future Railway Communications

The European train control system employs GSM-R for communications between trains and the command/control centers. GSM-R technology is quite old and will be replaced in the near future by other technologies offering less expensive solutions, especially for regional and local lines. This article investigates a new telecommunication solution based on multi radio bearers using cellular and satellite public networks as an alternative to the deployment of a dedicated infrastructure. A test campaign on a 300 km of rail line (about 10,000 km of tests) has been carried out to evaluate the performance of cellular and satellite networks in a railway environment. Test trial results presented and discussed in this article have been used to assess the performance of a multipath TCP protocol to effectively support multi-bearer communications. A discussion of the economic benefits and the potential industrial implications of the proposed solution concludes the article.