Performance Evaluation of Train Propulsion Control on Ethernet Network Using TrueTime

Abstract

Because of its convenience and environmental benefits, public transportation like railway is getting more attention. With the growth of data traffic generated by smartphones, laptop computers and multimedia devices, in railway, there has been increasing demand for data services such as passengers’ Internet access and surveillance video data transmission. In order to meet such increasing demand for data communications, International Electro-Technical Commission (IEC) has been standardizing new Ethernet-based Train Communication Network (TCN) standards. Since Ethernet is not able to guarantee fixed and sustained data rate for a certain service class due to the opportunistic nature of random access, communication schemes in the new Ethernet-based TCN standards are required to be carefully designed in order to support time-critical control applications such as propulsion and braking controls. In this paper, extensive study on the train propulsion control performance over Ethernet networks is provided. Since control system and network system need to be studied jointly in this study, co-simulation is implemented using TrueTime. Through extensive co-simulations, the train propulsion control performance on Ethernet is evaluated with the variety of interfering background data traffics.