Delay Tolerant Network protocols for an Expanding Network on a Railway

The paper presents the analysis of the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) methods in an expanding communication network on a railway line. Trains act as moving objects that send and receive messages or collected telemetry data to or from an external network. They can exchange the data with each other, delegating delivery. The paper compares various DTN protocols' ability to reduce the delay of data delivery and the additional buffer load needed. An analysis is based on the real European railway line example (map and train schedule), with various loads and different coverage of a mobile network. The effectiveness of DTN during migration to networks of a higher data rate (for example, with 5G capabilities) is discussed.