A new rolling stock architecture using safety computers and networks

Many embedded systems carrying out safety functions in railway applications are still operated with conventional relay-based systems, at the expense of kilometers of wiring in each train. To cope with this issue, Technicatome has developed a demonstrator for RATP (the Paris subway company) to assess pros and cons of alternative architectures based on interconnected digital systems. This demonstrator is currently in operation on an MF 88 train set. The paper summarizes the main features of this experiment.