The experimental evaluation of the EGNOS safety-of-life services for railway signalling

Abstract

This article describes the theoretical and experimental investigation of the satellite navigation based Safety-of-Life (SoL) services intended for railway safety-related applications. Main attention is paid to the EGNOS Precision Approach (PA) and Non-precision Approach (NPA) navigation modes, which were mainly designed according to the specific aeronautical requirements. Two basic research approaches have been used: 1) a recently developed methodology for the description of the GNSS quality measures in terms of railway dependability attributes, and 2) an operational EGNOS system with SoL receivers. The practical results include the theoretical analysis of the EGNOS SoL services for railway signalling and the experimental evaluation of the EGNOS PA and NPA operational modes in the laboratory and trial area. © 2010 WIT Press.