B Consulting - Rail Industry Radio

B Consulting

Rail Industry Radio

Modern railway projects all include a requirement for radio network design for both safety of life voice communications and track to train signalling. Radio design principles for rail are the same as those for public/private radio network design, but there are particular requirements for system reliability which must be derived with regard to the overall signalling system design specifications. The specific nature of the radio environment around train borne antennas means that the effects of fading, blocking and inter-modulation can have severe effects on the performance of the radio link. This means that there important factors individual to railway projects that need to be taken into account in order to build a reliable and maintainable track-side radio system at the lowest possible cost.

B Consulting has developed specialised skills in this market, and through the recently formed Rail Industry Radio™ partnership can access specialised and experienced associates with particular expertise of working internationally in the railway industry. Our particular fields of expertise are

High reliability RF design – no single point of failure in radio and transmission above ground or in tunnels
Interference mitigated GSM-R designs
Design, modelling and interference prediction for wide-band railway signalling systems operating above 2GHz

A European rail operator was suffering increasing interference to their GSM-R network and suspected that the recent opening up of the adjacent 900MHz mobile spectrum bands to 3G technology might be at least partially to blame. B Consulting analysed the problem using laboratory measurements and having characterised out of band emissions, net filter discrimination and inter-modulation characteristics of the relevant transmitters and receivers, built a simple to use modelling tool to predict potential interference issues in the field.

An international railway engineering consortium had won and delivered an international new-build signalling upgrade programme. An important payment milestone was dependent on the performance of the VHF radio signalling system, which appeared to both variable and generally deteriorating over time. As an emergency measure, B Consulting provided a radio systems design expert assess the most likely causes. The root cause of the immediate issues was rapidly identified, and the design review also identified other potential system issues requiring resolution in the medium term.

An international railway engineering consortium was bidding for a large metropolitan railway upgrade programme. An important aspect for the programme – and one presenting both technical and commercial risk – was the approach to signalling design. B Consulting provided radio systems design engineering expertise with sufficient commercial and project management expertise to enable a high level design and cost to be produced in a relatively short time. Modelling of the system at a high level allowed the impact of various systems choices to be understood in terms of radio system performance, risk and cost.

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