Friday 6 November 2009
GSM-R

Report on the GSM-R Working Groups latest meetings

Share this article

The GSM-R Functional Group meeting #37 took place in 28 of October, in UIC HQ.

The GSM-R Functional Group (FG) is an experts group, with members from DB, JBV, OBB, NRIC, SNCF, ERA, UIC, tasked to maintain/update the EIRENE FRS (Functional Requirements Specifications).

The EIRENE FRS, part of the CCS TSI, is dealing with functional requirements for GSM-R, deriving from operational needs. National implementations issues are also discussed, the expert groups comparing the issues raised with their own administration experiences and checking the possible impact on specifications.

One of the main tasks for the FRS is to be kept technological independent, in such a way that when in future technologies will change, the impact on this specification document to be minimum.

The meeting dealt with various issues, like Overview of tones and announcements, Maintenance and Update of Cab Radio, Group Call Issues - operational scenarios and user requirements for High Priority calls and Group Calls between drivers in the same area, Emergency Call Areas - Functional requirements for overlapping Emergency Call Areas, enhanced Railway Emergency Call.

One of the most important issues for GSM-R in the close future – interferences induced by Public Mobile Operators using UMTS (3G) technology in the 900 MHz bandwidth, on GSM-R frequencies was discussed. Two main actions started: first as a long tem solution, an ETSI Special Task Force was required by UIC in order to deal with the UMTS out of band emission, the Cab Radio blocking conditions and very important with generating guidelines for cooperation between the Public and Railway Mobile Operators, when in Railway proximity.

As a short term solution, discussion were opened on the impact of filtering the GSM-R Cab Radios and mostly the EDORs (ETCS Data Only Cab Radio) When such a filter would be introduced, in some cases the performances are improved, but the impact on the system – mobile and network side, as well as impact on the operations – case of National Roaming, also different other scenarios has to be studied.. Working groups have to be involved very soon, in order to find in time a suitable harmonized solution.

Next meeting – FG #38 is programmed for 20 of January 2010.

For more information please contact Dan Mandoc: mandoc@uic.org

0 vote