WRIT - GSM-R. Mobile communication in the service of railway workers

... the future is already very close.
... this is not news; this is information for self-enrichment

instead of intro

paraphrasing words from one old song: without a connection, and neither tudy nor syudy. This is especially felt by us, the workers of the steel mains. Now we have an insane amount of heterogeneous types of communication. One worker, for production needs, may have a bunch of telephone sets. And this moment is a bit depressing, since the quality of this connection is, in most cases, just awful.

some history

As they say, in Europe there are about 30-35 types of communication. And the train there is almost like an anthill. Any French train will travel all over Europe and, as you understand, you need to be always in touch.
Based on the above factors, the International Union of Railways (UIC) together with the International Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) created a new project organization EIRINE (European Modernized Integrated Radio Communication Network on Railways), which began the development of a new rail communication standard.
The ERTMS principle is based on the unified control of the movement of all trains in Europe and a single system that will be installed on all trains plying the territory of the European Union.
This standard should meet the following basic requirements:
• be a pan-European international digital standard with a minimal degree of modification for use on railways
• ensure reliability in operation, which should be verified in public mobile networks
• to ensure the integration of all communication services and services of a railway application in one network
• support specialized communications services for railways and broadcast systems in use today
• provide for the possibility of smooth introduction of new services and services organized in the future
• be cost-effective both in installation and in operation.

As a result, after a series of test projects and comparisons of several technologies, the choice fell on the GSM standard, which was modified to suit the needs of the railway. This standard is called GSM-R (GSM-Railway - GSM Standard for Railways).

Thanks to this technology, it became possible to transfer train and shunting radio communications to a new powerful unified digital system platform. GSM-R provides high availability and reliability, implements integrated algorithms for the exchange of information with high-speed trains. It supports group and broadcast calls, call priorities, call interruption when an urgent call with high priority is received. What is undoubtedly much better than what we have (.
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As well as GSM, GSM-R is friendly with GPRS, which gives us the opportunity to receive telemetry information from any locomotive, any station or road span in real time. Information about the location and speed of the train will be transmitted over the GSM-R network to the control center, which will fully automate the process of controlling the movement of trains.

As for the market of this technology, then here unconditional leadership belongs to the company Siemens. Siemens concluded the first commercial contract for the supply of GSM-R in Sweden in 1998, and in July 2000 commercial operation of the GSM-R system in Sweden (Oresund) began. It is worth noting that this was the first full-scale project in the world. In addition, on the basis of Siemens equipment, large networks were built in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Norway and other countries.

some technical data:
Frequency range : 876-880 MHz and 921-925 MHz (frequency reuse should be used with maximum efficiency)
Base station : power from 20 to 320 W (depending on the class)
Mobile station : power up to 10 W
Wearable station : power up to 2 W
Frequency division channels : the band allocated to the needs of GSM-R, is small - only 4 MHz

If we talk about us, about the countries, so to speak CIS, then things are a little worse, if not more. Everyone seems to understand that this is good, but ...
As an excuse, I heard such a version that we are not given a frequency range for the implementation of this technology.

... and this is news

As for RZD specifically, colleagues will be able to fully use the GSM-R trunking connection: the government has prepared a document allowing RZD to use the 876-880 MHz and 921-925 MHz radio frequency bands on a secondary basis. The State Commission on Radio Frequencies approved this idea back in March of this year.

So far, these frequencies are used by aeronautical equipment, and the current table of the use of radio frequencies 876-880 MHz and 921-925 MHz does not provide for the possibility of using land mobile radio communications. However, the State Radio Frequency Commission (SCRF) approved the draft amendments to the strip allocation table for creating a GSM-R railway communication system as early as March 2009.

The Russian Railways may have a GSM network covering most of the territory of Russia, but it will have to spend about $ 3.6 billion to build it. That's it. I hope for the example of Railways followed by our Belarusian Railways.

Read more about ERTMS and GSM-R standard here .