QoS
Monitoring
As railway communications systems are operating support systems, railway network problems can be one of the factors that impact costs and safety, thus they need regular network quality assessments. To conduct this evaluation, accurate and frequent network monitoring must be performed.
Monitoring railway radio networks differs from testing the quality of service of a normal mobile network. In a railway network, tests are subject to strict requirements and need to comply with UIC testing methodologies, which the conventional testing systems do not fulfill.
The EIRENE specifications force restricted connection establishment times, velocity-dependent cell overlaps, and higher coverage probabilities that must be granted in all the railway track extensions (on each 100m segment length).
Also the ASCII features must be tested, such as:
- Voice Group Call Service
- Voice Broadcast Call Service
- Railway Emergency Calls
- Location Dependent Addressing
- Functional Numbering
- Enhanced Multi-Level Precedence and Pre-emption
Based on SIGRAIL Monitoring, SOLVIT offers a periodical or continuous monitoring service to ensure that the network is still performing as it should, in continuous compliance with the requirements. Quality of Service can be affected by environmental changes, for example, new buildings constructed/demolished, wooded areas growing over time; or by other external factors such as public network changes near the track.
SOLVIT railway network monitoring service includes the following contents:
- Measurements acquirement using SIGRAIL Monitoring
- Data processing to extract network performance and quality parameters
- Report generation