Challenges Toward Wireless Communications for High-Speed Railway

High-speed railway (HSR) brings convenience to peoples' lives and is generally considered as one of the most sustainable developments for ground transportation. One of the important parts of HSR construction is the signaling system, which is also called the “operation control system,” where wireless communications play a key role in the transmission of train control data. We discuss in detail the main differences in scientific research for wireless communications between the HSR operation scenarios and the conventional public land mobile scenarios. The latest research progress in wireless channel modeling in viaducts, cuttings, and tunnels scenarios are discussed. The characteristics of nonstationary channel and the line-of-sight (LOS) sparse and LOS multiple-input-multiple-output channels, which are the typical channels in HSR scenarios, are analyzed. Some novel concepts such as composite transportation and key challenging techniques such as train-to-train communication, vacuum maglev train techniques, the security for HSR, and the fifth-generation wireless communications related techniques for future HSR development for safer, more comfortable, and more secure HSR operation are also discussed.