LTE as the future railway communication system: benefits and challenges

In this paper the main challenges associated with the migration process towards LTE, will be assessed. These challenges comprise, among others, the next key topics: Reliability, Availability Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) requirements, end to end Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, system performance in high speed scenarios, communication system deployment strategy, and system backward compatibility as well as the future system features for delivering railway services. The practical evaluation of the LTE system capabilities and performance in High Speed Railway (HSR) scenarios, require the development of an LTE demonstrator and an LTE system level simulator. Under this scope, the authors have developed an RF LTE demonstrator, as well as an LTE system level simulator, that will provide valuable information for the assessing of LTE performance and suitability in real HSR scenarios. This work is being developed under the framework of a research project to evaluate the feasibility of LTE to become the new railway communication system. The companies and universities involved in this project are: Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Alcatel Lucent Spain, ADIF (Spanish Railway Infrastructure Manager), Metro de Madrid, AT4 Wireless, the University of A Coruña (UDC) and University of Málaga (UMA).