Safety characteristics analysis of Korean standard communication protocol for railway signalling

Abstract

This paper describes how the safety requirements for communication in the railway systems were recently standardized as IEC 62280. The railway signaling system requires higher safety levels than any other system and it is very important to establish a safety communication link for an interface among safety equipment such as between the CTC communication server and field equipment, LDTS, or electronic interlocking system or among SCADA. The communication protocol for an interface among railway signaling systems was designed and established as a national standard in Korea a few years ago. So the communication link for information transmission among the railway signaling system can be a good example of the application of this standard. The communication protocol which is standardized among Korean railway signaling is considered to apply information transmission. The authors confirmed there is no state of deadlock or livelock in the standard protocol to which is applied formal verification which is one of the analytic methods for inspection of safety characteristics in the design course of protocol. But the safety of the protocol has to necessarily accomplish this normal analysis approach by satisfying requirement matters with such an analytic approach. This paper analyzed the safety characteristics of the standard protocol for Korean Railway signaling compared the requirements for safety of the railway transmission system required by the international standard. Through this study, the authors confirm whether it satisfies the safety requirement to the level required in the international standard and tried to confirm whether the standard protocol has enough safety characteristics in the real railway field.