Objectives

Main-line and urban railway networks play a pivotal role in the economic growth of a country. High urbanisation rates in metropolitan areas have increased the demand for high-capacity rail infrastructures, which require an efficient interoperability among several systems and services; that calls for high standards of safety and reliability.

In turn, rail systems and services call for a high level of innovation in the telecommunications, and automation and control fields. In recent years, the technological progress has resulted in the development of systems for automatic train protection, operations and control that make use of different telecommunications standards and technologies.

In recent years, traditional wireless networks have been playing a key role in supporting railway signalling systems. They run alongside the railway infrastructure and provide voice and data services for train control and operations, as well as emergency communications, video surveillance and protection, multimedia services and also passenger connectivity. However, the coverage of such wireless networks seems to be not efficient. That is either because they are not specifically developed for the railway infrastructure, or because they cannot be adapted to keep up pace with the dynamics, or meet the mobility requirements, of railway infrastructures. Therefore, train operators need to put in place broadband telecommunications networks, through heterogeneous technologies, whether fixed or wireless.