Ethernet as a Train Bus

Article for the Forum Bahntechnik of the CNA Author: Manfred Schmitz, CTO MEN Mikro Elektronik GmbH Nuremberg, February 2010

Railway vehicles be it railcars or locomotives, underground trains or trams or passenger and freight trains are equipped with a multitude of single functions which are all interconnected. For the train drive these are the control of the traction and the brakes, the clutches and the gearboxes, the antiskid system and the increase of braking power via sanding. In the drivers cabin there are the display systems for speed, tank filling level, SIFA (monitoring), GSM as well as the data logger and train safety systems. The motor starter, the pre-heating system or the traction cooling system are connected to the main supply, while the electric equipment and the battery are connected to the auxiliary supply. In a vehicle for passenger traffic there is also the control of the inner and outer doors, the inner and outer lighting system, the air conditioning and the sanitary equipment, the train coupling and possibly the tilting system. Recently passenger information systems and wireless access to Internet services have been increasing traveling comfort. Another trend is to systematically equip trains with monitoring and safety systems for passengers and the train infrastructure. In the past, many of these subsystems could be accessed via point-to-point-connections on the basis of RS232 or RS485. As the number of computer-controlled subsystems increased, it was necessary to switch to higher-performance communication channels so that different fieldbus networks were introduced in railway vehicles. The latest data-intensive innovations like infotainment, web access and other wireless services like GPS and GSM led to solutions based on Ethernet networks. At the moment the whole transport industry is changing rapidly, there are as many approaches as there are vehicle manufacturers.

Development of Bus Systems in Trains

In the IEC TC 9 WG 22, the Train Communication Network TCN has been created in the 90s as a railway-specific fieldbus according to IEC 61375 in cooperation with the UIC (International Union of Railways). It consists of the Vehicle Bus MVB (Multifunction Vehicle Bus) and the Train Bus WTB (Wire Train Bus). The TCN defines the time and safety critical data transfer in railway vehicles using the complete Layer 7 architecture. The deterministic transfer of time-critical process data is guaranteed by periodic, source-addressed transmission and reliable on-demand transmission of data, either point-to-point or via a multicast transmission protocol. As the main focus for the WTB was on interoperability, the UIC has defined application profiles and a conformance test in the leaflet 556. Since 1995, practically all vehicles delivered by Bombardier and Siemens have been equipped with MVB and in most cases also with WTB. The software stacks have been developed at Bombardier

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and Siemens, they are not for sale and not completely inter-compatible - a typical example of building up a barrier for fending off competitors.

Within the TCN network the MVB can be used as a fieldbus inside one vehicle or inside a group of fixedly coupled vehicles. It is defined for a data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbits/s via optic fiber cables and/or twisted pair cables. As the MVB controller chips are proprietary and expensive, often other fieldbuses like CANopen or Profibus are used instead of the MVB with the exception of Bombardier. The WTB train bus, a dynamic bus system that was developed for operation of passenger trains with a locomotive, is also extremely expensive in the application. It features exceptional processes such as the automatic numbering of the wagons during train formation or the building up of fritting voltages (very high direct voltage used for cleaning of coupling contacts). It is defined for a data transfer rate of 1 Mbit/s over a distance of up to 860 meters via a twisted pair cable and built up redundantly.

Limits of the Conventional Fieldbus Structure

Seen from today, the bandwidth of TCN and the other fieldbuses is reaching its limit. There are no user organizations as for CANopen and Profinet which look after the standard. Thus there are implementation differences and differing incompatible physical interfaces which complicate interoperability. In addition, the cost per node is ten to one hundred times higher than for CANopen. This entails that dependent on the manufacturer different fieldbuses like CANopen, Profibus, Profinet, WorldFIP, Bitbus etc. are used. This in turn generates unnecessary costs, as different fieldbuses require different configuration tools and analyzing devices. In more complex trains, this requires gateways which have to mediate between the different buses and protocols. Price and bandwidth problems together make it ever more necessary to use highperformance standardized transport protocols like TCP/IP or UDP/IP. Some manufacturers have already taken the first step and established Ethernet IP as an information bus beside WTB as the train bus and MVB or CANopen as the vehicle bus. Meanwhile, displays in the driver cabin, passenger information systems, CCTV video monitoring cameras, content servers, GPS modules, GSM receivers or WLAN terminals are connected to the Ethernet switch the IT bus structures become homogeneous. However, real-time data are often transmitted via WTB and fieldbus while the WTB delivers the train topology data via NADI (Node Adress & Attribute Directory). Like in the industry, Ethernet seems to be able to win ground as a robust backbone in a train.

Different Kinds of Ethernet

The big technological progresses of Fast, Gigabit and 10Gigabit Ethernet, switching and collision-free full-duplex transmission as well as time-synchronous protocols and standardized safety protocols on Industrial Ethernet have accelerated development in automation, which makes it possible to replace the fieldbuses used today. In real-time applications, however, there are competing standards like Profinet, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT,
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Ethernet Powerlink and many more. Which solution will establish itself in railway vehicles remains to be seen, but the costs per node should be similar to those of CANopen. This opens up new possibilities to build a completely homogeneous network based on Industrial Ethernet onboard a vehicle.

Profinet
Profinet brings together the knowledge and experience of Profinet and Industrial Ethernet in one technology. The concept is modular, so that the user can choose the cascadable functionality himself. The main difference is the type of data transfer needed to meet the sometimes very high requirements regarding speed. PROFINET IO has been created for the real-time communication (RT) and the synchronous communication IRT (IRT= Isochronous Real-Time) with the decentralized periphery. The names RT and IRT describe the real-time characteristics of the communication. PROFINET IO describes the complete data exchange between Controllers (devices with master functionality) and Devices (devices with slave functionality) as well as parameterization and diagnosis. PROFINET IO has been designed for fast data transfer between Ethernet-based field devices and conforms to the Provider/Consumer model. An Application Relation (AR) is built up between a Controller and a Device. Via this AR, Communication Relations (CR) with different characteristics are defined for the parameter transfer, cyclic data transfer and error treatment. The characteristics of a device are described by the device manufacturer in a General Station Description (GSD). The GSD file is used by an engineering system as the basis for planning the configuration of a PROFINET IO System.

Ethernet/IP
EtherNet/IP CIP on Ethernet Technology EtherNet/IP offers tools for using standardized Ethernet technology for applications with Internet & Enterprise Connectivity. This makes it possible to access data everywhere. DeviceNet uses CIP, so that a consistent automatization structure is ensured. Simply speaking, in EtherNet/IP telecommunication protocols which are also used for DeviceNet are transferred via UPD/IP and TCP/IP, this is referred to as encapsulation. In EtherNet/IP a star topology combined with standardized Ethernet infrastructure devices is used. The Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) offers a wide range of messages and services for the acquisition of data from production automatization, including information for control, functional safety, synchronization, movement and configuration. CIP is media-independent and offers users a uniform communication architecture across the whole production process. Users benefit from the numerous advantages of open networks, while investments in automatization are at the same time protected in future system updates.

EtherCAT
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The main issue of EtherCAT is that the data for the I/O nodes, encoders, drives, etc. are not sent to each station as a separate telegram. The telegram rather passes all stations which take the data addressed to them and at the same time insert data at the places assigned to them. This results in an extremely short processing time per node. This shared usage of one telegram enables the high user data rate of EtherCAT. According to the standardization
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group user data rates of more than 90% can be reached. In the most simple case EtherCAT only communicates within its own subnet. Here the optimized EtherCAT protocol is directly transferred within the Ethernet frame. The data sequence is independent of the physical sequence of the nodes, addresses can be assigned randomly within the 4 GB process image. It is possible to use star, tree and line topologies as required in the industry. Realtime capability is realized via distributed clocks. As the communication is built up as a ring structure logically and is based only on hardware, a mother clock can determine the time offset in the logic ring and synchronizes the distributed slave clocks.

Ethernet Powerlink
Ethernet Powerlink realizes real-time requirements using extended time slice and polling processes. Networks with Ethernet Powerlink are compatible with other Ethernet applications. Powerlink is conform to e.g. CANopen Standard Device profiles according to EN 50325-4. Powerlink can address up to 240 nodes per network segment, is hot-plugcapable and enables direct communication between the slaves. One of the nodes in the network is the Managing Node, which allocates the bus rights according to the time slice procedure. It allocates sending rights to the controlled nodes and reads back data via polling. After this synchronized communication phase additional data can be exchanged asynchronously. Similar to CANopen single parameters or data sets are accessed via process data objects. The structure for each node is fixed in the object register. Within a network Ethernet Powerlink works with fixed IP addresses (Class C, 254 available addresses). Communication with other networks is only carried out via routers, to secure network traffic. Direct access to single nodes is enabled via Network Address Translation. The address of each node is set in the node itself. Within a Powerlink network only Powerlink-conform slaves may be operated to ensure time-synchronous data transfer. In addition there are other real-time Ethernet standards like IEC 1588 (Precision clock synchronization protocol for networked measurement and control) which requires special hardware but is widely supported. SERCOS-III is mainly used for fast axis control. FL-Net is driven by Mitsubishi in Japan. AFDX/ARINC 664 is driven by Airbus and Boeing and is already used in the A380, A400M and in the Dreamliner.

TCN and Ethernet

Not least, the IEC 61375-1 Ed.3 (Electronic Railway Equipment Train Communication Network) is extended at the moment. Beside TCN, WTB and MVB it integrates not only a CANopen Consist Network but also defines an Ethernet Consist Network (ECN). This ECN is based on Standard EthernetIP Stacks, so that it does not need special hardware, but it is not completely real-time capable. Unfortunately, ECN still only works with the expensive and proprietary TCN stack. At the moment it is still completely unclear which standard will establish itself. In the case of the IEC 61375 (TCN and Ethernet) it is also in doubt whether the standard will be adopted in time. Here the users are asked to formulate their requirements concertedly or as has happened in the past - alone.
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Requirements for Ethernet in a Train

Which (real-time) Ethernet will come out on top in trains mainly depends on it being capable of meeting some very special requirements regarding functionality, environment and maintenance. In trains three network topologies are used; line, ring and ladder structures. While line structures are chosen for uncritical data, rings are common in real-time environments. Gateways are indispensable as long as different communication buses are used in the train. Gateways e.g. from WTB to Ethernet are complicated and expensive. An important function is fritting, i.e. cleaning the coupling contacts via current surges. As a simple and cost-effective solution, Ethernet offers the possibility to use Power over Ethernet (PoE according to IEEE 802.3af). Here, the data lines are used for supplying end devices and overlaid with a direct voltage. No additional lines are necessary. The IEE 802.3af divides the participating devices in Power Sourcing Equipment, PSE and Powered Devices, PD. For a supply voltage of 48 V, a current of up to 350 mA may flow. There is an alternative for building up train buses in existing trains with couplings without data lines. It is called Ethernet Powerline (also DLAN or Homeplug). This "network via power socket" establishes itself increasingly beside the traditional Ethernet cable and the WLAN network. One of the undisputed advantages is its easy installation. The theoretical speed of the newer Homeplug AV standard is 200 Mbits/s by now, that means it is faster than WLAN and the usual 100-Mbit LAN for a maximum line length of 200 meters. As the encoded data stream ends at the electricity meter, Homeplug is safer than WLAN. Drawbacks of Homeplug are the price, the intercompatibility of the devices, the electromagnetic susceptibility and the temperature range. In addition environmental requirements as prescribed by EN 50155 have to be taken into account. A robust connector technology has to be used on the hardware side. The RJ45 connectors often used for Ethernet are not accepted in the railway market. Instead, D-Sub connectors and M12 connectors which are now also available for Gigabit Ethernet are used. The power supply units have to meet special requirements, e.g. they have to support wide input ranges from 9 V to 154 V. The requirements for protective circuits also differ from those for standard industry components. For example, transients of 1800 V for a duration of 50 s are specified. Also, different demands are made on the maintainability of the Ethernet devices. These are for example used as an easily exchangeable 19" cassette or as compact devices for spacesaving wall-mounting. For an easy on-site configuration dongles are usually used.

Ethernet Only in the Train of the Future

This scenario in which there are still many unanswered questions from today's perspective will probably become reality much faster than expected. The driving factor is the big financial gain for the final integrators and end customers or users. They will finally be able to use

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standardized protocols as well as a wide range of OEM devices and assemblies (including the Ethernet backbone with switches, cables and connectors). Product costs and system costs can be lowered considerably. They can benefit from the dynamic development in IT while conforming to the industry standard EN50155. In the last instance the vehicle suppliers benefit from the basic developments and uses TCP/IP or UDP/IP as transport protocol. They do not have to care for railway specific proprietary developments. The same scenario applies to the infrastructure in buses or utility vehicles. For operation of passenger trains with a locomotive, the problem of the automatic numbering of the wagons during train formation, i.e. the need for interoperability, remains, so the WTB will probably be used there for a long time still. In applications where the UIC 556 does not have to be taken into account, like for the modern ICE or TGV/AGV in traffic, the vision of an Ethernet-only communication structure could become reality in the next three to five years already.

Ethernet in the Application

Ethernet as a backbone for infotainment applications (announcements, advertising, films on the one hand mobile office, games etc. on the other hand) in the train is state-of-the-art even today. Likewise, monitoring systems for the safety of passengers as well as logistic functions communicate via Ethernet. In one of several configuration possibilities for infotainment systems, communication inside the train is carried out via several Fast Ethernet channels, while wireless interfaces are used for external communication for example for satellite-based internet access. Access to GPS, UMTS, GSM or HSDPA is ensured via PCI Express MiniCards on suitable carrier boards. All these functions are typically integrated modularly and maintenance-friendly in CompactPCI systems for 3U boards. For controlling the system, one or several Intel-based CPU boards are used which can carry out different functions. RAID configurations for content servers are housed in similar systems. Camera surveillance systems are also often equipped with one or several hard disk slots for building a RAID configuration. One or several railway-compliant wide-range PSUs per system complete each solution. Often the assemblies are coated against dust and humidity according to EN 50155 and specified for an operating temperature of -40 to +85C. For further information about the CPU, I/O and communication assemblies and the individually configured, railway-compliant CompactPCI systems as well as the different Ethernet Switches see www.men.de .

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