A Multi-Mode Multi-Band and Multi-System-Based Access Architecture for High-Speed Railways

With the rapid development of high-speed railways all over the world, it is very promising to deliver public broadband access to passengers aboard high-speed trains. However, it has been a challenge to support high speed (e.g. above 350 km/h) mobile users with broadband communications, because of rapidly fading radio channels and Doppler frequency shift. This paper presents a review of network architectures providing broadband access to high-speed trains. A novel scheme referred as multimode multi-band and multi-system-based access architecture is proposed in this paper. It consists of three parts: (1) train network part that relays data to large number of users in carriages without changing their own terminals, (2) ground network part that deals with traffic from different operators' networks, and (3) ground-to-train network part that connects the train network and ground network. Moreover, this architecture could support high mobility with broad bandwidth, seamless handover, scalable and cost-effective deployment.