2008 – March – Mindel – Interoperability of Radio Block Centres

Klaus Mindel Dr.-Ing. Thales Rail Signalling Solutions ETCS Level 2 is developed as a European standard and several projects are already in operation, mainly on a national basis but increasingly crossing borders. ETCS sparks more and more interest outside Europe, because of its maturity, functionality, flexibility and safety. For the long term perspective, customers value this public standard as a guarantee for multi sourcing, providing long term system availability and competition. Interoperability is a relevant property in itself and on top of that a prerequisite for multi sourcing. One major component of ETCS Level 2 trackside is the Radio Block Centre. This technical paper examines, to what extent RBCs are interoperable already today, how compatible they are at their interfaces, their level of functional standardization and how they fit into an existing infrastructure. As most important topic the paper gives an example of how interoperability can be tested.