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Railway scenarios present several specific features that difficult the deployment of a radio communication network, especially for high-speed environments. Railway passenger’s demand for high capacity communication systems for personal purposes is continuously growing. This demand drives the installation of public commercial communication systems: 3G, LTE, which not only coexist next to GSM-R system infrastructure, but may be also deployed in frequency bands which lie next to GSM-R ones. This fact may lead to interference issues between both systems, as reported by several railway operators.
Regarding the critical nature of railway communication systems, it is advocated the avoidance of interference issues in advance. However, this process is a complex task that must be addressed with specific software tools that takes into account the specificities of high-speed railway communication systems. In this paper, the authors present a novel software tool designed for the evaluation of coexis- tence between high-speed railway communication systems and public commercial ones.
GSM-R, high-speed railway, interferences, LTE, railway environments, software tool.
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