Improving Packet Delivery Efficiency Using Dual 3GPP LTE Communication Modules for Railroad Wireless Communication

As a next generation of Global System for Mobile Communications – Railway (GSM-R), 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE)/ LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) is considered for railroad wireless communication, i.e., LTE-Railway (LTE-R). Railroad wireless communication has its own requirements and functions since railroad wireless communication is very closely related to safety. In order to meet the requirements of LTE-R and provide high QoS level, it is very crucial to have very small packet delivery delay. Since it is anticipated that it will be difficult to deploy LTE-R network with redundant network architecture like GSM-R due to spectrum shortage, high QoS and reliability of LTE communication is very important for LTE-R. Railroad wireless communication network configuration has very unique characteristics compared to other wireless communication networks. Since train moves on pre-installed fixed track, train movement can be easily measured. In this paper, by exploiting the unique characteristic of railroad wireless communication, an improved packet delivery scheme using dual communication modules for railroad wireless communication is proposed. By using the proposed scheme, almost zero service interruption time during handover can be achieved. Since the protocol architecture of the proposed scheme utilizes the current LTE railroad wireless communication hardware, the proposed scheme can be utilized with minimum modification.