Mobile data transmission in a railroad environment

Data radio transmission as applied to the railroad environment is studied. It is shown that data transmission in a railway environment can be improved by utilizing a relatively modest forward error correction (FEC) technique. Analytical methods can be utilized to calculate an approximate carrier-to-noise ratio for data radio transmission without FEC. To determine the carrier-to-noise ratio with FEC, it is necessary to take measurements of the mean signal level versus the block success rate. It is shown that when an effective ratio coverage prediction model is utilized properly, good correlation exists between measured and predicted radio coverage. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that proper utilization of an FEC scheme has the effect of significantly improving radio coverage. At the 90% reliability level excellent agreement between measured and predicted results exists