railway management

advancing control and communication with distributed systems

the background

Our clients are a producer of rolling stock, whose vehicles are used in over a dozen of countries across Europe, and a manufacturer of radiocommunication systems. They were looking for a trusted embedded technology partner who would further develop their existing distributed systems for railway management and communication. The systems needed to be customizable for the needs of specific rail operators and include multiple features such as advertising management, passenger information system and video surveillance.

the approach

Tronel built dedicated project teams that collaborated with clients’ R&D departments. We adopted a SCRUM approach increasing the efficiency of the workflow. The employment of CI/CD tools allowed us to automate the development process. To ensure the reliability, security and high performance of the systems, our specialists ran multiple series of automatic and manual tests in both the virtual and production environment. On the software level, unit and integration tests were also conducted. We adhered to the highest security standards through the implementation of multiple authentication levels and TSL 1.3 protocol via OpenSSL and OpenSSH libraries.

Tronel offers complete embedded solutions for the railway industry, from software engineering, through the choice of suitable hardware, to system integration and optimization.

technologies we used

C, C++, C#
Windows Embedded, Linux
Microsoft SQL, PostgreSQL
Qt, WPF
TCP/IP, UDP, WCF
x86_64, ARM
Jenkins
WLAN hotspots

the solution

We created flexible, scalable and high-performing distributed systems with customizable components spread across multiple computing devices. The systems allow for exchanging and processing information in real time between the client application and the vehicle fleet. The client application controls the status of the group of vehicles by connecting with application servers that exchange information directly with vehicles. In turn, the information collected from vehicles is sent to the database and the newest status of the particular train or tram is visible in the client application.

The vehicle driver can access the system from the intuitive HMI application with touchscreen control and, for instance, select a suitable route from the database. The information is displayed to passengers on LCD and LED screens mounted inside the vehicles as well as in the mobile passenger application. To avoid transmission delays, the systems are fully synchronized using a proprietary solution developed at Tronel.

system components

geolocation system

uses GPS and Train Control and Management System (TCMS) to locate the vehicles, update route schedules in real-time and report delays

advertisement management

allows the operator to remotely upload the advertisements, manage the display schedule and receive performance reports

passenger information system

provides passengers with information on service details, schedule change updates and real-time visualizations

Internet hotspot

in addition to providing Wi-Fi to passengers, it also allows the operator to gather information on data usage, the number of connected users and its impact on signal strength

statistics system

records the number of people entering and leaving the vehicle determining the passenger load on particular lines and during specific times

audio system

allows the driver to send audio announcements to passengers and receive calls from emergency intercoms

radio communication

automatically records, saves and stores the voice calls conducted between the driver and the operator’s base

CCTV

provides video surveillance and automatically saves and stores the camera recordings

the results

We built reliable distributed systems that coordinate multiple components and can be fully customized to match the requirements of specific rail operators. The systems significantly increased the efficiency of rail control and communication, enhancing service quality and improving passenger comfort and safety. Tronel is continuing both partnerships and we are currently working on advancing the systems further.

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