Long Term Evolution for Wireless Railway Communications: Testbed Deployment and Performance Evaluation

Abstract

In this article, we show the feasibility of the LTE-R testbed with essentially IP-based network architecture. Specifically, we discuss procedures of deploying LTE-R by describing our construction of a testbed in a commercial railway through cell planning and optimization. Then we demonstrate the performance enabled by the implementation of a testbed for LTE-R. We confirm that not only reliable communications but also multimedia services requiring high data rates are feasible, which gives us some guarantee of the prosperity of various advanced train services. We also discuss a number of valuable technical communication issues related to inherent characteristics of railway communications that are unlike those of commercial wireless communications.