Citation

Amanna A, Gadhiok M, Price M, Reed J, Siriwongpairat W, Himsoon T. IEEE Veh. Tech. Mag. 2010; 5(3): 82-89.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Wireless communication plays a vital role in the success of railroad operations. This article describes an effort toward developing a railroad-specific cognitive radio (rail-CR) that can meet the needs of future wireless communication systems for railways by making positive train control communication more interoperable, robust, reliable, spectrally efficient, and less costly to deploy and maintain. Rail-CRs are a cutting-edge research area that combines artificial intelligence with software-defined radios (SDRs) with the goal of improving on existing radio performance. SDRs are radios in which capabilities are flexible because of realizing some functionality in software as opposed to a purely hardware platform. By using situational awareness from the radio in the form of observable parameters, a cognitive engine uses software-based decisionmaking and learning algorithms to determine whether a change in the radio parameters is required based on sets of predefined goals.