Laboratory integration testing of railway signalling systems for high-speed trains

Railway signalling systems consist of several items of vital computerized equipment such as CTC (Centralized Traffic Control system), EIS (Electronic Interlocking System), ATC (Automatic Train Control system) and so on. Currently, railway signalling systems for the next-generation high-speed trains are being developed in Korea. The railway signalling systems being developed, called kTCS (Korean Train Control System), are composed of kTCS-CTC, kTCS-IXL, kTCS-ATC etc. kTCS signalling systems have to be operated at the laboratory level as integrated signalling systems with an interface between each developed signalling systems before trackside field installation and revenue service. For this laboratory testing for interface and functions verification, communication protocols between the signalling equipment are designed and message codes for each defined protocol are defined. Also several emulation modules have been developed for the integrated railway signalling systems for laboratory testing. We have plentifully tested and verified the designed protocols and the characteristics of integrated railway signalling systems with each of our developed kTCS signalling systems, communication protocols and several emulation modules.