TECHNICAL ISSUES IN MODELLING THE EUROPEAN TRAIN CONTROL SYSTEM (ETCS) USING COLOURED PETRI NETS AND THE DESIGN/CPN TOOLS

At the Institute of Control and Automation Engineering Design/CPN has been used to model the European Control System (ETCS) within a project for the Deutsche Bahn AG (German railways). This paper reports of experiences in modelling this complex, distributed automation system using Coloured Petri Nets and the Design/CPN tools. We will concentrate on some technical issues. However, for motivation we will give a brief overview of the application and will describe the modelling paradigms that we applied. The process of European harmonization is still in progress, which also concerns the railway companies. Each European railway company has one or more train control systems, which are mostly incompatible. So every train which shall run through diierent countries has to be equipped with several systems or the train traction units and drivers have to be changed at every border. As a consequence, the rst solution requires a complex system on-board, which leads to high installation and maintenance costs. The second one is a time consuming solution, which leads to increased operational costs. Thus, it is important to deene a train control system which is standard for all countries and provides a uniform and language-independent signalling information for the man-machine-interface (MMI). Frosig95] Moreover, the increase of new developed trains' maximum speed demands a communication-based train control system, because at a travelling speed of more than 160 km/h the trackside