A CPN -Based Reliability Analysis of a Wireless Communication System in a Virtually Coupled Train Set

Wireless communication system is the solid foundation for a communication-based train control system, especially for the control of train tracking with a short headway in a virtual coupling scenario. This paper proposes a hierarchical timed colored Petri Nets (HTCPN s) approach to analyze the reliability of train-to-train (T2T) communication links and the relationship between communication link reliability and train operation safety. A T2T communication link model in the context of virtual coupling operations is developed. Specifically, HTCPN models are built to describe the communication link with handover and communication link failure. Data collector monitors are deployed to collect the emulated data. That data is used to analyze the reliability of the T2T communication link in a Virtually Coupled Train Set (VCTS). We found that the error rate of the communication link and handover latency are the main factors for train operation safety in a VCTS.