The Digital Railroad and FRMCS. A replacement for GSM-R

The digital railway concept emerged with the first operational implementation of GSM-R in 1999. The International Union of Railways (UIC) describes GSM-R as “the carrier of the first Digital Railway Radio Communications System”. GSM-R is a second generation (2G) digital radio system based on the commercial GSM mobile phone system adapted for use on railways. Companies like Motorola modified their very successful 2G land mobile infrastructure products to support GSM-R. GSM-R has been very successful throughout Europe and is used in more than 20 countries on 100,000 km of track. The number of modern rail communications systems is expected to increase in the coming years due to ongoing installations around the world, including locations such as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, India, China, and Australia.

GSM-R technology is now over 20 years old and vendors are actively planning for end-of-life support for equipment. Which means that software updates and hardware replacements will cease on the end of life date. The latest 5G technologies have been designed to support flexible mobile broadband systems, supporting both low bit rate and very high bit rate connections.

Enter, FRMCS – Future Railway Mobile Communications System. It started in 2012 with the publication of a UIC called the User Requirements Specification (URS) to capture user requirements for communications on the railway around the world. FRMCS is much more than a placement for GSM-R, it represents an opportunity to revolutionize communications in a modern rail system.

At the time of this writing, the latest URS is FU 7100-v5.0.0, released in May 2020. These user requirements are translated into Functional Requirements Specification (FRS) and in turn into Requirements Specification system (SRS). The SRS is necessary to comply with European directives regarding interoperability between European railways. Second, the use cases can be submitted to ETSI and 3GPP for a “gap analysis”.

Although the UIC states that FRMCS should be technology independent, it makes no sense to develop a new technology when 3GPP has a set of standards focused on mission critical communications (MCX).

The FRMCS project is underway with an FRMCS demonstrator planned for 2023 and the first national tests starting in 2024. The benefits of FRMCS are very significant for a rail operator, however the timeframes are very short and there are a number of challenges ahead. face success. FRMCS implementation.

FRMCS is another area of ​​Critical National Infrastructure in which Wray Castle are international experts. We’ve been helping telecommunications professionals stay ahead of ever-changing technology since 1958.

For more information on FRMCS, visit the Wray Castle website.