Evaluation of ETCS performance with LTE as alternative railway communication network using OPNET

GSM-Railways (GSM-R) is a communication mobile network designed to fulfill specific communication needs of railways. GSM-R is being widely deployed across Europe and other countries around the world for providing railway voice and train control services (ETCS). Despite that, GSM-R already shows various shortcomings in terms of capacity and support for additional data services.

This triggers the issue whether railways could greatly benefit from an alternative communication technology. One of the possible alternatives is LTE. In our work we analyze delivery of railway services over an LTE network. This work is done using OPNET as simulator for modeling real life railway scenarios and communication infrastructure.

These scenarios take advantage of OPNET features allowing modeling an end-to-end LTE network, as well as trains movement over an exemplary real life railway line.