A distributed safety-critical system for real-time train control

An architecture and methodology for executing a train control application in an ultra-safe manner is presented in this paper. Prior work in advanced train control systems are summarized along with their assumptions and drawbacks. A flexible architecture that allows fault-tolerant and fail-safe operation is presented for a distributed control system. A safety assurance technique which detects errors in software and hardware for simplex systems is presented in this paper. Performance results important to real-time control are obtained from modeling and simulating the architecture. An experimental prototype implementing the architecture and safety assurance technique is described together with experimental results.