Using a rolling stock with a mid-range wireless technology to collect service and diagnose data in areas without mobile signal coverage

Abstract

The use of the IEEE 802.11p technology - also known as Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication - for railway applications is currently topic of the national project Rail2X - Smart Services in Germany. This short-range to mid-range peer to peer wireless technology can be used in remote areas to collect data for service and diagnosis applications. It could be an interesting use case that contributes to the reduction of cost and improving data quality. A further relevant extension of this work is the interaction between automotive and railway components using the above referenced technology. Collecting service and diagnose data from infrastructure elements in the field is an important feature to be able to identify and predict possible malfunction from elements in the field remotely. Today there are two main ways of collecting data, firstly over a physical connection such as telephone or Ethernet or secondly over a mobile connection such as LTE or UMTS. Nowadays, even in countries such as Germany, there are regions were no or a very poor mobile signal is available. In such cases, the use of a mid-range wireless technology such as V2X could be an alternative to collect this kind of data. Using this technology in a railway environment was done already in some prototypes and now the Rail2X consortium is working on prototypes and field tests for further evaluation. The approach for the used case Service and Diagnosis is in the focus of this contribution.