Reliable Ethernet Architecture with Redundancy Scheme for Railway Signaling Systems

Recently, vital devices of the railway signaling systems have been computerized in order to ensure safe train operation. Due to this computerization, we have gradually come to need networking interfaces between these devices. Thus it is important that there be reliable communication links in the signaling systems. Network technologies are applied in the real-time industrial control system, and there are numerous studies to be carried out on the computer network technology for vital control systems such as railway signaling systems. For deploying the studies, we consider costs, reliability, safety assurance technique, compatibility, and etc. In this paper, we propose the Ethernet for railway signaling systems and also precisely describe the computer network characteristics of vital railway signaling systems. Then we demonstrate the experimental results of the proposed network algorithm, which is based on switched Ethernet technology with redundancy scheme.