Performance of railway track circuit codes with burst interference

The data capacity of railway track circuits can be increased by the use of binary block codes. A comma-free coding scheme suitable for railway track circuit data is presented which out performs the other comma-free code construction in terms of synchronisation in Gaussian noise. However, the interference encountered in a railway environment is likely to be impulsive and bursty rather than Gaussian. Simulation results of the (31,11) BCH coset code modulated by non-coherent FSK are presented, using an impulsive interference model which more accurately represents typical railway noise.