Self-checking design, implementation, and measurement of a controller for track-side railway systems

In this paper, we propose a case study of field programmable gate array (FPGA)-implemented self-checking circuits. In particular, we propose the design, implementation and experimental measurements of the Transmission and Reception Blocks of a Track-side Control System for railway applications. Our scheme is designed to feature on-line testing ability with respect to possible functional errors affecting the received and transmitted words, as well as with respect to a wide set of possible internal faults, representative of the most likely faults for FPGA-implemented systems. It negligibly impacts system's performance and features a more compact structure with respect to its alternative design making a massive use of the duplicate and compare technique. A prototype has been implemented, whose correct operation has been verified by means of post-layout simulations and experimental measurements.