Probabilistic method for railway traffic control systems diagnosis

Railway traffic control systems have a key role in ensuring the smooth operation of railway traffic. Therefore, the basic requirement, in addition to the implementation of necessary system functions, is continuous striving for ensuring the high level of reliability. Contemporary development of railway traffic control systems is associated with the application of modern information and communication technologies, which makes it possible to extend the functionality of these systems by the logging events and selfdiagnostics. However, there are no standards in this area, which considerably complicates the unification of scope and types of acquired diagnostic data as well as their analysis. This, of course, has a negative impact on the maintenance of the systems technical reliability. The authors of the paper have noticed this important problem and have proposed a new diagnostic method for railway traffic control systems, which is based on a probabilistic inference. They also verified the developed diagnostic method by testing it on the level crossing protection system. The obtained results have proved the correctness of the adopted railway traffic control systems diagnosing concept.