Classification of Communication Interfaces in Railway Systems

The development of communication networks has also an impact on railway systems. The advantages of new technologies could be benefit in railway related communication, but the very strict safety requirements should be satisfied. During the last decades many new communication elements occurred in railway interlocking and in connected systems that must be reliable and stable. Common communication solutions could be the basis of used techniques in railway system, but the functionalities and safety levels must be defined precisely. In railways system several overlapping data network serves the different functionalities, e.g. interlocking, traffic management, maintenance and diagnostics. This article aims to categorize the communicating entities in railway context, identify the interfaces, their types and reliability factors. The high availability could be supported if the network has redundancy built in. Several solutions for redundancies are present in practice, and this methods also applied in high reliability data networks.