Measurements and Modeling of Distributed Antenna Systems in Railway Tunnels

This paper covers some of the work carried out in the planning of the global system for mobile communication for railway (GSM-R) of the tunnels on the new high-speed trains in Spain. Solutions based on distributed antenna systems have been tested by installing several 900-MHz transmitters inside and outside of a 4000-m tunnel and measuring the propagation in different conditions. The measurements have been used to model the effects of tunnel propagation, including curves, trains passing from the outside to the inside, and the effect of two trains passing inside the tunnel. All cases have been tested by comparing solutions using isofrequency and multifrequency distributed transmitters inside the tunnel. The improvements of signal-to-noise ratio and the reduction of the blocking effects of two trains passing have demonstrated the advantages of using isofrequency distributed antenna systems in tunnels. Finally, a complete propagation model combining both modal analysis and ray tracing has been applied to predict the propagation loss inside and outside these tunnels, and results have been compared with the measurements. The model has proven to be very useful for radio planning in new railway networks.