Guest Editorial Special Section on Smart Rail Mobility: Communications, Signaling, and Emerging Technologies

The purpose of this special issue is to provide the academic and industrial communities an excellent venue to present the vision, research, and dedicated efforts on the key emerging technologies for smart rail mobility. Rail transport networks are now reaching an important development stage worldwide. High-speed rail transports have achieved significant development in Europe and China and are becoming popular in many countries. On the other hand, metropolitan transport will have an increasing importance in the coming years to reduce pollution and congestion in cities. Both metropolitan and high speed railways (HSR) require the use of advanced signaling and control systems to guarantee and optimize their operation. For these reasons it is necessary to use modern communication and signaling systems for the automated control of these railways. In addition, the railway infrastructures use many supplementary systems such as remote control, video surveillance, obstacle detection and operating aids that require the intensive use of information and communication technologies. In all cases the electrical and electronics equipment must have a high quality of service, reliability and availability to fulfill railway requirements. On the other hand, users of modern transport networks demand high-capacity broadband connections with quality equivalent to that of their private homes, and rail operators want to offer supplementary entertainment services to improve the experience of their users, so fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems will play an important role on the railway environment in the next years.