Dynamic Communication Architecture for Intelligent Rail Network Governance

The existing models for rail networks are non-real-time applications. This means that there is no 'real-time' interaction between the applications and the operational environment, which is being simulated. Therefore, significant time-lags exist between the gathering of data and its use in simulation environments, and further lags between the completion of the simulations and the application of the results to the network. This research work proposes a dynamic communication architecture using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to increase railway capacity through real-time communication between the trains and other structures such as stations, signals etc. in the rail network. This includes considering formal specification to assure safe operation and provide the mechanism for forming ad-hoc federations of nodes. New designs for mobile network topologies, wireless technologies, simulation tools, routing protocols, propagation models, and network types are considered to enable the proposed architecture to achieve communication in real-time. Various real-life scenarios are considered for evaluation. An optimum design for dynamic communication architecture is proposed and its characteristics are evaluated through simulation and analysis.