Railway signaling systems and new trends in wireless data communication

With the increment of passenger railway traffic especially in high speed lines, improvements in railway transportation safety become even more crucial. This paper presents technological and commercial trends in this area, enumerates innovative on-going related projects and proposes the application of new wireless communication standards such as, DSRC - WAVE (Dedicated Short Range Communications and Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment) or 802.11 p; 802.16 or WiMAX, and MBWA (Mobile Broadband Wireless Access) or 802.20, in train control communications networks. In order to validate this proposal, we have designed a model for a wireless communication system deployed in a fully redundant configuration. The application of these new open-standard technologies will allow an affordable deployment, ubiquitous, always-on and interoperable muti-vendor mobile broadband train control communication system that supports new safety set-vices and applications.