Study on feasibility of SATCOM for railway communication

Final Report
Economic feasibility of business applications
Yes Possibly No No reply
7.3 CONCLUSIONS
Figure 67: Economic feasibility of business applications
Section §7.2 provided a statistical analysis of the results from the SATCOM on the Move & Trains
Survey. Participation to this Survey was relatively high, with 26 responses from both SATCOM and
RAIL stakeholders, and the following conclusions could be reached:
Awareness: RAIL stakeholders are obviously well aware of the ongoing initiatives on GSM-R
replacement and are well-represented in the corresponding standardisation bodies and
Working Groups. Specific knowledge of SATCOM solutions is relatively low, with almost no
awareness of ESA ARTES projects and little or no experience with SATCOM products, except
in a few pilot lines and experimental activities
Overall technological suitability. Few SATCOM products are currently certified for the
railway domain, be it EN-50155 or other railway-specific norms. However, the perception
among SATCOM providers is that current SOTM products are suitable for this domain, with a
majority stating compliance with the RF channel characteristics (Doppler, slow and fast fading,
multipath and off-axis masks), even though antenna dimensions remain the main trend and
technological challenge, in this as well as other mobile environments. Around 70% of the
SATCOM providers stated that they either provided safety-oriented mobile services already or
intended to do so in the future. On the other side, RAIL stakeholders cited irregular service
availability along the railway line as their main concern regarding SATCOM solutions, followed
by the latency inherent to GEO systems.
Handheld support. There seems to be a key divergence in the way SATCOM and RAIL
stakeholders look at handheld support. In the railway domain, such handhelds are taken for
granted and supported by current communications systems (GSM-R, analogue radio). In the
SATCOM domain, however, adding handheld support is conspicuously missing from SOTM
Doc.Nº: SRAIL-FNR-010-IND
Edit./Rev.: 1/1
Date: 16/02/2017
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