Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Safe4Rail-3 (Advanced safety architecture and components for next generation TCMS in Railways)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-12-01 do 2022-05-31
The standards and concepts which defined in the 90’s the foundation of the Train Control and Monitoring System (TCMS) are still reliable and applicable but they accumulated many technological limitations. The Next Generation TCMS (NG-TCMS) aims at overcoming these limitations through the implementation of new technological concepts and technologies, providing newer and safer features for the on-board subsystems and reaching highly available and reliable train operation.
Safe4Rail-3 in collaboration with its complementary project CONNECTA-3 will contribute to the development of the NG-TCMS advancing the maturity of the technologies and devices acquired in Safe4Rail-2 to achieve TRL 6/7 and validating them in an operational real environment.
In order to achieve these goals the main objectives of Safe4Rail-3 are listed hereafter
• Objective 1: Advanced safety architecture and DbD devices in order to pass from prototypes to TRL 6/7 solutions.
• Objective 2: Advanced wireless technologies for a wireless TCMS
• Objective 3: Integration of TCMS subsystems (AP) on Functional Distribution Framework
• Objective 4: Assessment of the safety and cybersecurity of DbD, FDF and Wireless TCMS
• Objective 5: Development of a centralization tool for the DbD
• Objective 6: Contribution to benchmarking of proposed NG-TCMS as well as standardization in railway and wireless domains
Safe4Rail-3 in collaboration with its complementary project CONNECTA-3 will contribute to the development of the NG-TCMS advancing the maturity of the technologies and devices acquired in Safe4Rail-2 to achieve TRL 6/7 and validating them in an operational real environment.
In order to achieve these goals the main objectives of Safe4Rail-3 are listed hereafter
• Objective 1: Advanced safety architecture and DbD devices in order to pass from prototypes to TRL 6/7 solutions.
• Objective 2: Advanced wireless technologies for a wireless TCMS
• Objective 3: Integration of TCMS subsystems (AP) on Functional Distribution Framework
• Objective 4: Assessment of the safety and cybersecurity of DbD, FDF and Wireless TCMS
• Objective 5: Development of a centralization tool for the DbD
• Objective 6: Contribution to benchmarking of proposed NG-TCMS as well as standardization in railway and wireless domains
During the first period of the project, Safe4Rail-3’s consortium, in collaboration with its complementary project CONNECTA-3, was mainly dedicated to define the foundation for future implementation using as a basis the requirement and results of previous projects, in particular the Safe4Rail-2 and CONNECTA-2 results. A set of DbD and Wireless TCMS requirements was consolidated in the D1.1 and D2.1 as a result of this activity.
The design and the implementation of DbD and Wireless TCMS devices started as planned in the first period and will finish in the second one, but with some delay mainly caused by the extension of the previous project activities. The FDF activity has been disrupted due to the fact that AUTOSAR AP standard does not offer a level of stability for safety which would be required to achieve SIL 4 and TRL 6/7 in the given time frame of Safe4Rail-3.
Finally, the assessment of the safety and cybersecurity was launched and preliminary analyses were performed for specific questions in the areas of DbD, FDF and Wireless TCMS. A safety workshop was organized to communicate and discuss the basis of the safety studies and a second safety workshop was carried out in Brussels to assess the preliminary results. The objective of the safety and cybersecurity studies is to evaluate the underlying innovative concepts with regard to their suitability for the intended use and conformity with the standards basis, to work out open aspects and to reveal gaps in order to support the derivation of a methodology for the development of FDF functions with a high level of safety (up to Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL 4)), and to sufficiently mitigate threats in the area of cybersecurity.
The design and the implementation of DbD and Wireless TCMS devices started as planned in the first period and will finish in the second one, but with some delay mainly caused by the extension of the previous project activities. The FDF activity has been disrupted due to the fact that AUTOSAR AP standard does not offer a level of stability for safety which would be required to achieve SIL 4 and TRL 6/7 in the given time frame of Safe4Rail-3.
Finally, the assessment of the safety and cybersecurity was launched and preliminary analyses were performed for specific questions in the areas of DbD, FDF and Wireless TCMS. A safety workshop was organized to communicate and discuss the basis of the safety studies and a second safety workshop was carried out in Brussels to assess the preliminary results. The objective of the safety and cybersecurity studies is to evaluate the underlying innovative concepts with regard to their suitability for the intended use and conformity with the standards basis, to work out open aspects and to reveal gaps in order to support the derivation of a methodology for the development of FDF functions with a high level of safety (up to Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL 4)), and to sufficiently mitigate threats in the area of cybersecurity.
The Safe4Rail-3 consortium plan to have by the end of the project a TRL 6/7 DbD and Wireless devices already integrated and validated in the CONNECTA-3 operational real environment which can contribute to the implementation of the NG-TCMS increasing the capacity of the lines and the Life Cycle Costs and their performance.
In addition, the results of the wireless antenna position but also the Safety and Cybersecurity studies planned during the second period of the project will contribute to define the future evolution of the technologies.
These are the advances and impacts in the three research areas of the project:
1. DBD: The consortium plan to have by the end of the project a TRL 6/7 DbD devices(i.e. consist switch and PCIe card). These devices will be based on the Time Sensitive Network (TSN) technology, which has mechanisms to create, distribute, synchronise and operate systems in real time. Even though current trains already meet very high safety standards, the TSN technology increases the time precision with which the monitoring and control data are managed in the bus of the train (the Train Control and Monitoring Systems, or TCMS), increasing in this way the safety of the different train systems.
2. Current communication systems inside the train are based on wired solutions that are very costly to maintain and reduce the flexibility of installations. For this reason, Safe4RAIL-3 planed to develop a wireless solution with high TRL level (TRL 6/7) for the bus of the train that removes the current physical connections, which reduces maintenance costs and gives greater flexibility to operations such as the connection and disconnection of wagons. This has involved an analysis of currently available wireless standards and the subsequent implementation of improvements on the standards in order to fulfil the communication requirements of the train.
The developments of all wireless devices has advanced correctly, except for the OAI LTE-V2X module, which has been delayed due to difficult code merge between different OAI branches, as well as commercial LTE-V2X modules (MK6) by Cohda Wireless, which are operational but do not support natively ETBN Ethertypes. By the end of the project all wireless devices will be completed. Special attention will be paid to solving the OAI code merging issue, for which EURECOM will involve additional OAI experts.
3. Another output of the project has been planned in this project, the independent safety studies and cybersecurity studies for the system architecture and perform analysis and close cooperate with the OEMs and real providers in order to update the concepts if necessarily. Additionally, the consortium is contributing to the standardization through the collaboration with the complementary project CONNECTA-3 and our involvement on the IEC TC9/WG46 where we focus on update of the standard IEC 61375 (Train communication network).
The current status of the different parts of the standard is as follows:
• IEC 61375-1. This part was already updated, including the network architectures defined in WP1 (NG-TCN) and WP2 (Wireless Coupling). This draft is currently in the CD stage to be circulated to different international committees for comments.
• IEC 61375-2-5. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to review this part to include the ETBN features specified for the NG-TCMS. Moreover, in the last plenary meeting, members of WG43 agreed Moxa lead the revision of this part.
• IEC 61375-3-2. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to review this part to include the CS features specified for the NG-TCMS.
• IEC 61375-2-3. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to review this part to include the requirements for communications specified for the NG-TCMS.
• IEC 61375-2-7. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to create a new working group to review this part to include all the features for the wireless Train Backbone.
In addition, the results of the wireless antenna position but also the Safety and Cybersecurity studies planned during the second period of the project will contribute to define the future evolution of the technologies.
These are the advances and impacts in the three research areas of the project:
1. DBD: The consortium plan to have by the end of the project a TRL 6/7 DbD devices(i.e. consist switch and PCIe card). These devices will be based on the Time Sensitive Network (TSN) technology, which has mechanisms to create, distribute, synchronise and operate systems in real time. Even though current trains already meet very high safety standards, the TSN technology increases the time precision with which the monitoring and control data are managed in the bus of the train (the Train Control and Monitoring Systems, or TCMS), increasing in this way the safety of the different train systems.
2. Current communication systems inside the train are based on wired solutions that are very costly to maintain and reduce the flexibility of installations. For this reason, Safe4RAIL-3 planed to develop a wireless solution with high TRL level (TRL 6/7) for the bus of the train that removes the current physical connections, which reduces maintenance costs and gives greater flexibility to operations such as the connection and disconnection of wagons. This has involved an analysis of currently available wireless standards and the subsequent implementation of improvements on the standards in order to fulfil the communication requirements of the train.
The developments of all wireless devices has advanced correctly, except for the OAI LTE-V2X module, which has been delayed due to difficult code merge between different OAI branches, as well as commercial LTE-V2X modules (MK6) by Cohda Wireless, which are operational but do not support natively ETBN Ethertypes. By the end of the project all wireless devices will be completed. Special attention will be paid to solving the OAI code merging issue, for which EURECOM will involve additional OAI experts.
3. Another output of the project has been planned in this project, the independent safety studies and cybersecurity studies for the system architecture and perform analysis and close cooperate with the OEMs and real providers in order to update the concepts if necessarily. Additionally, the consortium is contributing to the standardization through the collaboration with the complementary project CONNECTA-3 and our involvement on the IEC TC9/WG46 where we focus on update of the standard IEC 61375 (Train communication network).
The current status of the different parts of the standard is as follows:
• IEC 61375-1. This part was already updated, including the network architectures defined in WP1 (NG-TCN) and WP2 (Wireless Coupling). This draft is currently in the CD stage to be circulated to different international committees for comments.
• IEC 61375-2-5. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to review this part to include the ETBN features specified for the NG-TCMS. Moreover, in the last plenary meeting, members of WG43 agreed Moxa lead the revision of this part.
• IEC 61375-3-2. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to review this part to include the CS features specified for the NG-TCMS.
• IEC 61375-2-3. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to review this part to include the requirements for communications specified for the NG-TCMS.
• IEC 61375-2-7. In the last WG46 plenary meeting, it was approved to create a new working group to review this part to include all the features for the wireless Train Backbone.