ETCS On-board Unit Safety Testing: Saboteurs, Testing Strategy and Results

It is necessary to verify the faults tolerance of the European Train Control System (ETCS) on-board unit even if these faults are uncommon. Traditional test methods defined and used in ETCS do not allow to check this, so it is necessary to develop a new mechanism of tests. This paper presents the design and implementation of a saboteur applied to the railway sector. The main purpose of the saboteur is the fault injection in the communication interfaces. By means of a virtual laboratory it is possible to simulate actual train journeys to test the ETCS on-board unit. Making use of the saboteurs and the virtual laboratory it is possible to analyse the behaviour of the train in the presence of unexpected faults, and to verify that the decisions taken are correct to ensure the required safety level. Therefore, this work shows a testing strategy based on different kinds of train journeys when faults are injected, and the analysis of the results.</p

Functional, thermal and EMC analysis for a safety critical analogue design applied to a transportation systems

Safety-critical equipment depends on the study of functional, thermal, EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility) and RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) fields. The variation of one area characteristic could result in a failure to fulfil safety requirements. Traditionally, thermal, EMC or RAMS issues were only considered once the design was done. This paper proposes a novel analogue equipment design methodology by studying these areas dependently from the beginning of the design process. Each area requirements and design parameters and the relation among them are defined qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on these dependences among all the areas, the cross-influence of each parameter variation in other areas requirements is demonstrated. The obtained results are intended to aid the fulfilment of requirements of the design of any safety critical analogue circuit, and to help designers to know beforehand the consequences of any change in the design, saving time and money. The application of this methodology in a SIL 2 RF transmitter is shown and the improvement and worsening of requirements depending on the parameters variation is exposed

Innovation-Based Fault Detection and Exclusion Applied to Ultra-WideBand Augmented Urban GNSS Navigation

Due to their ability to provide a worldwide absolute outdoor positioning, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have become a reference technology in terms of navigation technologies. Transportation-related sectors make use of this technology in order to obtain a position, velocity, and time solution for different outdoor tasks and applications. However, the performance of GNSS-based navigation is degraded when employed in urban areas in which satellite visibility is not good enough or nonexistent, as the ranging signals become obstructed or reflected by any of the numerous surrounding objects. For these situations, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology is a perfect candidate to complement GNSS as a navigation solution, as its anchor trilateration-based radiofrequency positioning resembles GNSS’s principle. Nevertheless, this fusion is vulnerable to interferences affecting both systems, since multiple signal-degrading error sources can be found in urban environments. Moreover, an inadequate location of the augmenting UWB transmitters can introduce additional errors to the system due to its vulnerability to the multipath effect. Therefore, the misbehavior of an augmentation system could lead to unexpected and critical faults instead of improving the performance of the standalone GNSS. Accordingly, this research work presents the performance improvement caused by the application of Fault Detection and Exclusion methods when applied to a UWB-augmented low-cost GNSS system in urban environments

FR8RAIL: Development of functional requirements for sustainable and attractive European rail freight

The modal share of intra-EU rail freight transport is less than 20% of the freight transport sector. The current rail"br" freight situation is not only due to the existence of legal barriers restricting competition (including the track access"br" regime, taxation, etc.), but also due to limitations of operational and technical nature, which impact the overall"br" capacity and performance of the sector."br" In order to overcome these issues, Shift2Rail set a specific Innovation Programme 5 (IP5) focused on Technologies"br" for Sustainable & Attractive European Rail Freight. In this context, the FR8RAIL project, is working on the"br" “Development of Functional Requirements for Sustainable and Attractive European Rail”."br" To overcome these limitations, a holistic approach involving several technical areas, that form the backbone of the"br" project approach. The outcomes of FR8RAIL will positively contribute to and support the Shift2Rail goals to"br" strengthen the role of the freight rail transport

Connected Heterogenous Multi-Processing Architecture for Digitalization of Freight Railway Transport Applications

The digitalisation of freight rail is an essential improvement to create modern functions that offer a cost-effective, attractive service and improved operational opportunities to operators. These modern functions need intelligence, detection, actuation and communications. For this, generally, it is possible to process raw data in the Edge and send meaningful data over a communication link. However, the power supply is not granted in a freight wagon and so low power strategies need to be adopted. This paper presents the implementation and testing of a wireless connected heterogeneous multiprocessing architecture. From the power consumption point of view, this system has been stressed by means of a generic FFT function to evaluate the different on-board computing devices that have been decided. From the communication point of view, the LPWAN LoRa technology has been tested and validated on robustness and coverage. Thanks to the heterogeneous nature of this architecture and its configurability, it allows us to propose the most suitable computing ressources, data analysis and communication strategy in terms of efficiency and performance for the functions that this wagon on board unit needs to host and support. With this approach, operation data are reported to the centralised freight driver assistant system

Connected Heterogenous Multi-Processing Architecture for Digitalization of Freight Railway Transport Applications

The digitalisation of freight rail is an essential improvement to create modern functions that offer a cost-effective, attractive service and improved operational opportunities to operators. These modern functions need intelligence, detection, actuation and communications. For this, generally, it is possible to process raw data in the Edge and send meaningful data over a communication link. However, the power supply is not granted in a freight wagon and so low power strategies need to be adopted. This paper presents the implementation and testing of a wireless connected heterogeneous multiprocessing architecture. From the power consumption point of view, this system has been stressed by means of a generic FFT function to evaluate the different on-board computing devices that have been decided. From the communication point of view, the LPWAN LoRa technology has been tested and validated on robustness and coverage. Thanks to the heterogeneous nature of this architecture and its configurability, it allows us to propose the most suitable computing ressources, data analysis and communication strategy in terms of efficiency and performance for the functions that this wagon on board unit needs to host and support. With this approach, operation data are reported to the centralised freight driver assistant system

Big-Data framework-based visualization solution for performance analysis of positioning systems in railway environments

The on-board positioning system provides not only the location estimation but also additional information about the certainty or quality of the provided estimation. Additionally, when developing the positioning system itself and evaluating the performance of the system, it is useful to thoroughly analyze the input parameter values used by the positioning system for each of the location estimates. A visualization platform based on Big-Data frameworks was highly demanded in this context and several alternatives were analyzed. This paper describes the approaches that have been tested and implemented, describes the difficulties and advantages of the alternatives and provides detailed steps for adapting the open-source Big-Data framework-based solutions to other application areas

Integration of safety and security in railway systems

Security is gradually taking center stage. Since traditional transport systems were based solely on mechanical or electromechanical devices and closed networks, today with an increasing number of information technologies and communications devices, systems are being migrated towards new communication technologies and open protocols. Although this has increased the efficiency and reduced costs to companies, the systems have become more vulnerable to external attacks. And railway is not and exception, its infrastructure is mainly based on computers that are interconnected via wired or wireless networks and it is highly distributed, therefore railway's infrastructure is difficult to protect and it is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This work shows an analysis about the standards used in security. A comparison with safety norms and the main reasons why security is currently not considered when developing safety critical devices are also described. Finally, an example of safety and security integration is presented

AIOSAT - Autonomous Indoor & Outdoor Safety Tracking System

Even though satellite-based positioning increases rescue workers’ safety and efficiency, signal availability, reliability, and accuracy are often poor during fire operations, due to terrain formation, natural and structural obstacles or even the conditions of the operation. In central Europe, the stakeholders report a strong necessity to complement the location for mixed indoor-outdoor and GNSS blocked scenarios. As such, location information often needs to be augmented. For that, European Global Navigation Satellite System Galileo could help by improving the availability of the satellites with different features. Moreover, a multi-sensored collaborative system could also take advantage of the rescue personnel who are already involved in firefighting and complement the input data for positioning. The Autonomous Indoor & Outdoor Safety Tracking System (AIOSAT) is a multinational project founded through the Horizon 2020 program, with seven partners from Spain, Netherlands and Belgium. It is reaching the first year of progress (out of 3) and the overarching objective of AIOSAT system is to advance beyond the state of the art in tracking rescue workers by creating a high availability and high integrity team positioning and tracking system. On the system level approach, this goal is achieved by fusing the GNSS, EDAS/EGNOS, pedestrian dead reckoning and ultra-wide band ranging information, possibly augmented with map data. The system should be able to work both inside buildings and rural areas, which are the test cases defined by the final users involved in the consortium and the advisory board panel of the project

An enhanced integrity multisensor Fusion for a reliable seamless navigation.

Since its first applications in the late 20th century, GNSS technology has been deployed by the world’s technologically advanced countries in multiple fields, from fleet monitoring to sport-related topics. This massive deployment has led to new use cases that may not have been expected during the definition of said technology. Different error sources, such as interferences, jamming, signal attenuation due to indoor or urban canyon navigation, and signal-blocking objects may degrade the performance of GNSS-based navigation. Thus, standalone GNSS systems may not fulfil all the requirements a certain scenario might ask for. This has resulted in the research of alternative or supplementary methods to solve the aforementioned issues, such as multisensor navigation. This has become one of the main alternatives to GNSS standalone navigation, as it has been shown in the literature that it can result in an improvement in navigation in terms of availability or continuity, for example. Human-life involvement and high-cost freight transportation, among other factors, have attracted the attention of the users to the definition of a measure of trust that is placed in the correctness of the information supplied by the navigation systems; also called integrity. This concept is employed, among others, to enable the system to detect if it is trustable for navigation, provide warnings, and even act consequently. In this dissertation, we analyze, first, the design of an online multisensory navigation algorithm as a solution to the issues GNSS suffers especially in urban and indoor environments. Moreover, a two-stage integrity-ensuring method is analyzed, being this second algorithm a tailored complementary feature of the proposed navigation one.Desde sus primeras aplicaciones a fines del siglo XX, la tecnología GNSS ha sido implementada por los países tecnológicamente avanzados del mundo en múltiples campos, desde la monitorización de flotas hasta temas relacionados con el deporte. Este despliegue masivo ha dado lugar a nuevos casos de uso no contemplados durante la definición de dicha tecnología. Diferentes fuentes de error, como interferencias, atenuación de la señal debido a la navegación en interiores o en cañones urbanos y objetos que bloquean la señal pueden degradar el rendimiento de la navegación basada en GNSS. Por lo tanto, es posible que los sistemas basados únicamente en GNSS no cumplan con todos los requisitos que podría solicitar un determinado escenario. Esto ha dado lugar a la investigación de métodos alternativos o complementarios para solucionar los problemas antes mencionados, como la navegación multisensor. Ésta se ha convertido en una de las principales alternativas a la navegación autónoma GNSS, ya que se ha demostrado en la literatura que puede resultar en una mejora en la navegación en términos de disponibilidad o continuidad, por ejemplo. La afectación de la vida humana y el transporte de carga de alto costo, entre otros factores, han llamado la atención de los usuarios sobre la definición de una medida de confianza que se deposita en la exactitud de la información suministrada por los sistemas de navegación; también llamada integridad. Este concepto se emplea, entre otros, para que el sistema detecte si es fiable para la navegación, emita avisos e incluso actúe en consecuencia. En esta tesis analizamos, en primer lugar, el diseño de un algoritmo de navegación multisensorial online como solución a los problemas que sufre el GNSS especialmente en entornos urbanos e interiores. Además, se analiza un método de aseguramiento de la integridad en dos etapas, siendo este segundo algoritmo una característica complementaria a la medida del de navegación propuesto