The ELEKTRA railway signalling system: field experience with an actively replicated system with diversity

Author

Kantz, H. ; Koza, C.

Author_Institution

Alcatel Austria AG, Wien, Austria

fYear

1995

fDate

27-30 June 1995

Firstpage

453

Lastpage

458

Abstract

Since the beginning of the century, Alcatel Austria has been the main supplier of railway signalling products in Austria. In 1985, Alcatel Austria began developing the electronic interlocking system ELEKTRA. In order to meet the stringent safety requirements for railway interlocking applications, a two channel system based on design diversity has been developed. High availability and reliability are achieved by using actively triplicated redundancy with on-line recovery. In 1989, the first system was put into operation. About 15 railway interlocking systems are in operation and further installations are ongoing. The paper presents the fault tolerance mechanisms used for design faults as well as physical faults. The experience gained with these concepts is also discussed.<>

Keywords

railways; redundancy; safety; safety-critical software; signalling; traffic engineering computing; Alcatel Austria; ELEKTRA railway signalling system; actively replicated system; actively triplicated redundancy; design diversity; design faults; electronic interlocking system; fault tolerance mechanisms; field experience; high availability; high reliability; on-line recovery; physical faults; stringent safety requirements; two channel system; Availability; Computer architecture; Costs; Fault tolerance; Fault tolerant systems; Hardware; Rail transportation; Railway safety; Redundancy; Software safety;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Fault-Tolerant Computing, 1995. FTCS-25. Digest of Papers., Twenty-Fifth International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Pasadena, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7079-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FTCS.1995.466954

Filename

466954