Lichtenau / Baden, Germany, 22nd November 2017 – The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has officially adopted results from LS telcom’s study “Coexistence of GSM-R with other Communication Systems” commissioned by the European Union Agency for Railways. The LS telcom report examined the possibility of using the ER/R-GSM spectrum by other radio communication systems for railways in coexistence with the existing GSM-R system operated in that frequency band. The objective of the study was to find out whether new spectrum is required for a successor system or whether band sharing during migration from GSM-R to its successor would be feasible.
The results of this study are integrated in the ETSI System Reference document (SRDoc) TR 103 333 about GSM-R networks evolution. This document intends “to describe the spectrum requirements for a European system for operational railway communications between a terrestrial ground network and a train, based on 4G/5G technology, and operating in the band 873 – 880 MHz paired with 918 – 925 MHz, in coexistence with the already deployed GSM-R technology.”
Both LS telcom’s study and ETSI’s System Reference document are part of a joint effort by the Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (UIC), the European Union Agency for Railways, the GSM-R industry and other railway stakeholders across Europe in close cooperation with ETSI to define and specify the next generation solution “Future Railway Mobile Communications System” (FRMCS), including future spectrum requirements.
A key challenge is that spectrum is needed for both the FRMCS and GSM-R during the migration phase. An update of the EU legal framework is necessary to make available additional harmonized spectrum in order to guarantee European railway interoperability.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login