mm-Wave Train-to-Train Communications for Next Generation Railways

Abstract

Although railways are a very safe and highly energy efficient, the dominant transportation mode is road transport. It accounts for 75% of all freight and 80% of all passenger transportation in EU-28. In order to shift more traffic on railways, next generation railways (NGRs) need to become more attractive and competitive by realizing innovations both on rolling stock and railway infrastructure. Hence, academia and industry are researching new applications such as virtual coupling of trains and autonomous trains. A key enabling technology for these new applications is mm-Wave communications. Typically wireless communications for railways means train-to-ground communications for the control, monitoring, and operations of trains, e.g. GSM-R. In contrast, we propose direct train-to-train communication in the C-band and in the mm-Wave band to enable virtual coupling and autonomous trains. Within this work, we present several results showing the benefits of direct communication for NGRs, e.g. ultra-reliable low-latency communication and ranging.