MmWave extra-large-scale MIMO based active user detection and channel estimation for high-speed railway communications

The current High-Speed Railway(HSR)communications increasingly fail to satisfy the massive access services of numerous user equipment brought by the increasing number of people traveling by HSRs.To this end,this paper investigates millimeter-Wave(mmWave)extra-large scale(XL)-MIMO-based massive Internet-of-Things(loT)access in near-field HSR communications,and proposes a block simultaneous orthogonal matching pursuit(B-SOMP)-based Active User Detection(AUD)and Channel Estimation(CE)scheme by exploiting the spatial block sparsity of the XLMIMO-based massive access channels.Specifically,we first model the uplink mmWave XL-MIMO channels,which exhibit the near-field propagation characteristics of electromagnetic signals and the spatial non-stationarity of mmWave XL-MIMO arrays.By exploiting the spatial block sparsity and common frequency-domain sparsity pattern of massive access channels,the joint AUD and CE problem can be then formulated as a Multiple Measurement Vectors Compressive Sensing(MIMV-CS)problem.Based on the designed sensing matrix,a B-SOMP algorithm is proposed to achieve joint AUD and CE.Finally,simulation results show that the proposed solution can obtain a better AUD and CE performance than the conventional CS-based scheme for massive IoT access in near-field HSR communications.

TCP-LTE/5G Cross-layer performance analysis tool for high mobility data networking and a case study on high-speed railway

Nowadays,high mobility scenarios have become increasingly common.The widespread adoption of High-speed Rail(HSR)in China exemplifies this trend,while more promising use cases,such as vehicle-to-everything,continue to emerge.However,the Internet access provided in high mobility environments stllstruggles to achieve seamless connectivity.The next generation of wireless cellular technology 5 G further poses more requirements on the endto-end evolution to fully utilize its ultra-high band-width,while existing network diagnostic tools focus on above-IP layers or below-IP layers only.We then propose HiMoDiag,which enables flexible online analysis of the network performance in a cross-layer manner,i.e.,from the top(application layer)to the bottom(physical layer).We believe HiMoDiag could greatly simplify the process of pinpointing the deficiencies of the Internet access delivery on HSR,lead to more timely optimization and ultimately help to improve the network performance.

Challenges of the Performance Standards of the International Finance Corporation in Financing the African Integrated High-Speed Railway Network and the Way Forward: The Case of Standard Gauge Railway in Tanzania

Financing of the African Integrated High-Speed Railway Network (AIHSRN) through Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Projects is very expensive. As a result, most of the African countries seek financial supports from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs). However, conditions provided by the IFIs through the Performance Standards (PS) of the International Financial Corporation (IFC) increase cost of the projects and thus, it becomes a burden to most of the African countries. This study aimed to explore the causes of IFC-PS through the SGR Projects that escalate costs and how to address them. The Tanzania SGR Lot 1 Project that covered 205 km from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro was selected as a case study. The methods used for data collection involved literature review, focus group discussions and interviews. The results and findings show a gap between the IFC-PS and the National Laws and Regulations that escalates costs of the projects if funds from the IFIs were to be secured. To bridge the gap, it is recommended that the African countries should engage into negotiations with the IFIs to agree to waive IFC-PS conditions that escalate costs provided they are adequately covered in the national laws and regulations;engagement of locally established national and regional financial institutions;and the responsible government institutions in the African countries should sit together for assessment and review of the IFC-PS against the national laws and regulations.

Study on 5G Application Scenarios in Intelligent High-Speed Railway

5G technology is indispensable for developing comprehensive perception and ubiquitous interconnection of intelligent high-speed railways(HSRs),and can be applied to many scenarios in intelligent construction,intelligent equipment,intelligent operation and in other fields.In order to promote the standardized application of 5G technology in intelligent HSRs in a scientific and orderly manner and to avoid redundant construction and wasteful investment,it is imperative to carry out a systematical top-level design of the application scenarios at the initial stage.To this end,after investigating and analyzing the 5G application demands in different aspects of HSRs and the general structure of the railway 5G network,this paper formulates an overall planning of 5G technology application scenarios and proposes solutions to some typical application scenarios in the intelligent HSR system,based on the architecture and requirements of the intelligent HSR system.

High-speed railway channel measurements and characterizations: a review

Wireless communication for high-speed railways （HSRs） that provides reliable and high data rate communi- cation between the train and trackside networks is a challenging task. It is estimated that the wireless communication traffic could be as high as 65 Mbps per high-speed train. The development of such HSR communications systems and standards requires, in turn, accurate models for the HSR propagation channel. This article provides an overview of ex- isting HSR channel measurement campaigns in recent years. Particularly, some important measurement and modeling results in various HSR scenarios, such as viaduct and U-shaped groove （USG）, are briefly described and analyzed. In addition, we review a novel channel sounding method, which can highly improve the measurement efficiency in HSR environment.

Virtual sample generation for model-based prognostics and health management of on-board high-speed train control system

In view of class imbalance in data-driven modeling for Prognostics and Health Management(PHM),existing classification methods may fail in generating effective fault prediction models for the on-board high-speed train control equipment.A virtual sample generation solution based on Generative Adversarial Network(GAN)is proposed to overcome this shortcoming.Aiming at augmenting the sample classes with the imbalanced data problem,the GAN-based virtual sample generation strategy is embedded into the establishment of fault prediction models.Under the PHM framework of the on-board train control system,the virtual sample generation principle and the detailed procedures are presented.With the enhanced class-balancing mechanism and the designed sample augmentation logic,the PHM scheme of the on-board train control equipment has powerful data condition adaptability and can effectively predict the fault probability and life cycle status.Practical data from a specific type of on-board train control system is employed for the validation of the presented solution.The comparative results indicate that GAN-based sample augmentation is capable of achieving a desirable sample balancing level and enhancing the performance of correspondingly derived fault prediction models for the Condition-based Maintenance(CBM)operations.

Investigation of Cross-Correlation Characteristics for Multi-Link Channels in High-Speed Railway Scenarios

This paper investigates the cross-correlation characteristics of large-scale parameters(LSPs) and small-scale fading(SSF) for high-speed railway(HSR) multilink propagation scenarios, based on realistic measurements conducted on Beijing to Tianjin HSR line in China. A long-term evolution-based channel sounding system is utilized in the measurements to obtain the channel data. By applying a proposed time-delay based dynamic partition method, multi-link channel impulse responses are extracted from the raw channel data. Then, the statistical results of LSPs, including shadow fading, K-factor, and root-mean-square delay spread are derived and the cross-correlation coefficients of these LPSs are calculated. Moreover, the SSF spatial correlation and cross-correlation of SSF are analyzed. These results can be used to exploit multi-link channel model and to optimize the next-generation HSR communication system.

Impact of high-speed railway construction on spatial relationships in the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration

The Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration is a response to the Belt and Road Initiative in Northwest China that aims to promote regional development.The direct impact of high-speed railway construction is to shorten the spatial-temporal distance among regions,improve the accessibility of regional transportation,and promote socioeconomic linkages.From the perspective of accessibility,this study analyzes the impact of high-speed railway construction on the spatial pattems and county-level economic relationships of the Guanzhong Plain urban agglom-eration.The results show that the construction of high-speed railway significantly improves regional accessibility,increases the potential for urban economic development,and gradually narrows the gaps in economic potential among cities.The construction of high-speed railway has increased the intensity of extenal economic relations among numerous counties in the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration,and most of the areas with increased connections are located in the direction of routes extension.The development of the internal economic network of the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration is unbalanced,and a complex network is gradually emerging with a few large cities at the core,but the construction of high-speed railway is changing the struicture of the economic network.In general,a certain degree of intrinsic coupling exists between regional accessibility change and the evolution of economic relations caused by high-speed railway,reflecting the requirements of the regional overall development strategy.

MPC-based time synchronizationmethod for V2V (vehicle-tovehicle)communication

Purpose–As the strategy of 5G new infrastructure is deployed and advanced,5G-R becomes the primary technical system for future mobile communication of China’s railway.V2V communication is also an important application scenario of 5G communication systems on high-speed railways,so time synchronization between vehicles is critical for train control systems to be real-time and safe.How to improve the time synchronization performance in V2V communication is crucial to ensure the operational safety and efficiency of high-speed railways.Design/methodology/approach–This paper proposed a time synchronization method based on model predictive control(MPC)for V2V communication.Firstly,a synchronous clock for V2V communication was modeled based on the fifth generation mobile communication-railway(5G-R)system.Secondly,an observation equation was introduced according to the phase and frequency offsets between synchronous clocks of two adjacent vehicles to construct an MPC-based space model of clock states of the adjacent vehicles.Finally,the optimal clock offset was solved through multistep prediction,rolling optimization and other control methods,and time synchronization in different V2V communication scenarios based on the 5G-R system was realized through negative feedback correction.Findings–The results of simulation tests conducted with and without a repeater,respectively,show that the proposed method can realize time synchronization of V2V communication in both scenarios.Compared with other methods,the proposed method has faster convergence speed and higher synchronization precision regardless of whether there is a repeater or not.Originality/value–This paper proposed an MPC-based time synchronization method for V2V communication under 5G-R.Through the construction of MPC controllers for clocks of adjacent vehicles,time synchronization was realized for V2V communication under 5G-R by using control means such as multistep prediction,rolling optimization,and feedback correction.In view of the problems of low synchronization precision and slow convergence speed caused by packet loss with existing synchronization methods,the observer equation was introduced to estimate the clock state of the adjacent vehicles in case of packet loss,which reduces the impact of clock error caused by packet loss in the synchronization process and improves the synchronization precision of V2V communication.The research results provide some theoretical references for V2V synchronous wireless communication under 5G-R technology.

Elliptical Cell Based Beamforming Design with an Improved β-Fairness Power Allocation for HSR Communication Systems

In this paper,a beamforming scheme to improve the coverage in high-speed railway communication systems is investigated.A dedicated coverage model,where the coverage cell is an ellipse rather than the traditional circular or linear,is considered.Based on the elliptical coverage cell,an optimization problem for the beamforming design is formulated to maximize the percentage of railway coverage,subject to the constraints on equal expected designed propagation gain(the gain obtained by a combination of designed beam and propagation channel)on the elliptical curve,i.e.,the expectation of designed propagation gain on the elliptical curve are all equal.Considering that the coverage can be improved by increasing the minimum designed propagation gain on the railway,the problem can be recast to maximizing the equal expected designed propagation gain on the elliptical curve.Subsequently,a beamforming design with an improved β-fairness power allocation,where the optimization problem is formulated to maximize the minimum expected received power over time with the constraints on elliptical cell based beamforming and mobile service amount,is proposed to further improve the coverage.An alternating iteration algorithm is developed to find the optimal beamforming vector and the instantaneous transmit power.Through numerical results,it is found that the beamforming designed on the elliptical curve covers longer railway than beamforming designed on the railway directly,and the coverage of elliptical cell based beamforming can be increased with the eccentricity.In addition,beamforming with the improvedβ-fairness power allocation can further improve the railway coverage and mobile service amount simultaneously.Moreover,it is shown that the larger eccentricity of the ellipse with appropriately chosen BS location,the larger coverage distance.

The Mechanism Behind Urban Population Growth and Shrinkage from the Perspective of Urban Network Externalities

Urban shrinkage is a global phenomenon,and it will coexist with urban growth for many years.At the same time,the network connection between cities continuously improved due to the construction of the transportation and information networks.However,the relationship between urban network externalities and urban population growth/shrinkage remains unclear.Therefore,based on high-speed railway(HSR)flow data,a spatial econometric model is used to explore the mechanism behind urban population growth and shrinkage from the perspective of network externalities in China.The results indicate that:1)the urban network experiences a certain clubbing effect.Growing cities that are strongly connected are concentrated along China’s main railway lines and the southeastern coastal areas,while shrinking cities that are weakly connected are distributed at the periphery of the network.2)Moreover,the network externality disregards spatial distance and together with the agglomeration externality influences the growth and shrinking of cities.3)Urban economic development still promotes the development of Chinese cities.However,the improvement of the urban economy has a negative cross-regional spillover effect on neighboring cities due to urban competition.4)Lastly,Local spillovers of urban network externalities are positive,while cross-regional ones are negative.Consequently,the government needs to promote the construction of multi-dimensional network connections between cities to promote cities’sustainable development.This study reveals the relationship between urban network externalities and urban development,enriches the theories of network externalities and urban growth/shrinkage,and provides a reference for regional coordinated development.

Scheme of Railway 5G Integrated Innovation Test Platform

An inevitable trend has already taken shape for the application of the 5th Generation Mobile Communication Technology(5G)in the railway sector.The application scenarios and business types of the railway sector are complex and diverse,so it is indispensable to test and verify the railway 5G before actual deployment.The design and creation of the railway 5G integrated innovation test platform provides engineering design,test and verification conditions for the networking,coverage and business development of 5G public networks and 5G-R in railway scenarios.This paper introduces the design of the overall architecture for the integrated railway 5G innovation test platform according to the railway network requirements,application scenarios and intelligent development trend;respectively elaborates on the design of the 5G-R core network,bearer network and wireless access along loop tracks,in combination with the characteristics of railway scenarios and the requirements of railway dispatching,operation and safety;raises further solutions on the network deployment and coverage schemes of 5G public networks so as to meet the application requirements of 5G public networks.The study results show that the integrated railway 5G innovation test platform scheme contains co-existence of 5G public and private networks,combines the indoor and outdoor scenarios,as well as takes into account of the dynamic and static tests so as to meet the environmental requirements for the integrated railway 5G test and application of all network functions,for which it can provide comprehensive technical support for railway 5G technology research and development,standard formulation,testing,etc.

Tackling Key Technological Problems and Advancing 5G Technology Application in Railway

The paper summarizes the development of mobile communication of domestic and foreign railways,and proposes the priorities for tackling key technological problems of railway 5G private network according to the technical routes of railway next-generation mobile communication determined by China State Railway Group Co.,Ltd.From the aspects of work objectives,principles,technical routes and innovative working methods,the paper elaborates the ideas of railway 5G scientific and technological research,puts forward the contents and plans of scientific and technological research on railway 5G private network,systematically organizes the achievements in the scientific and technological research stage of railway 5G private network,and sets forth the key contents of next-step scientific and technological research.

Broadband Communications for High-Speed Trains via NDN Wireless Mesh Network

With the increasing utilization of High-Speed Trains （HSTs）, the need for a reliable and high-bandwidth Internet access under high-speed mobility scenarios has become more demanding. In static, walking, and low mobility environments, TCP/IP （transmission control protocol/Internet protocol） can work well. However, TCP/IP cannot work well in high-speed scenarios because of reliability and handoff delay problems. This is mainly because the mobile node is required to maintain the connection to the corresponding node when it handovers to another access point node. In this paper, we propose a named data networking wireless mesh network architecture for HST wireless communication （NDN-Mesh-T）, which combines the advantages of Wireless Mesh Networks （WMNs） and NDN architectures. We attempt to solve the reliability and handoff delay problems to enable high bandwidth and low latency in Internet access in HST scenarios. To further improve reliability and bandwidth utilization, we propose a Direction-Aware Forwarding （DAF） strategy to forward Interest packet along the direction of the running train. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly reduce the packet loss rate by up to 51% compared to TCP/IP network architecture. Moreover, the proposed mechanism can reduce the network load, handoff delay, and data redundancy.

Flexible Optimal Model and Algorithm for Track Utilization in High-speed Railway Stations

Track utilization is the most important technical operation in high-speed railway stations.It is an effective way to take flexible man-agement based on dispatchers’decision preferences into consideration for making track utilization plans to relieve the influence caused by unmeasurable unstructured factors.Thus,based on the flexible management concept and taking the flexible optimal for track utilization in high-speed railway stations as the object,time and space occupation safety trajectories of arrival routes,departure routes and tracks are all analysed.Then,taking the following constraints into consideration-minimum safety time intervals for var-ious routes and tracks occupation,space-time arc occupation and decision-makers’preferences-a flexible optimal model for track utilization in high-speed railway stations is established to maximize its balance and robustness and to minimize its volatility at the same time.Further,a flexible optimal solution based on a simulated annealing algorithm is designed to make a safety track utilization plan in high-speed railway stations integrating the dispatchers’decision preference.The results from the experiments show that the proposed methodology can effectively make satisfied safety track utilization plans based on decision-makers’preferences,which can improve its balance and robustness level significantly.Meanwhile,its volatility can be reduced as much as possible caused by flexible management based on artificial intervention to ensure the relative stability of the plan.

Improved fault location method for AT traction power network based on EMU load test

The autotransformer(AT)neutral current ratio method is widely used for fault location in the AT traction power network.With the development of high-speed electrified railways,a large number of data show that the relation between the AT neutral current ratio and the distance from the beginning of the fault AT section to the fault point(Q-L relation)is mostly nonlinear.Therefore,the linear Q-L relation in the traditional fault location method always leads to large errors.To solve this problem,a large number of load-related current data that can be used to describe the Q-L relation are obtained through the load test of the electric multiple unit(EMU).Thus,an improved fault location method based on the back propagation(BP)neural network is proposed in this paper.On this basis,a comparison between the improved method and the traditional method shows that the maximum absolute error and the average absolute error of the improved method are 0.651 km and 0.334 km lower than those of the traditional method,respectively,which demonstrates that the improved method can effectively eliminate the influence of nonlinear factors and greatly improve the accuracy of fault location for the AT traction power network.Finally,combined with a shortcircuit test,the accuracy of the improved method is verified.

Value and governance of high-speed railway

This paper considers multiple perspectives to explore the concept of high-speed railway(HSR),rationally abstract its value formation mechanism, and quantitatively measure its actual performance. This paper analyzes the governance potential of major countries in the high-speed railway value chain and studies the feasible ways and development strategies to enhance the highspeed railway governance in China. Findings of this paper are as follows. First, the government, as the early manager of high-speed railway governance, has given way to Siemens and other integrated enterprises. Second, the highspeed railway standard output has become the core competitiveness that embodies high-speed railway. Third,the global high-speed railway market presents a hierarchical high-speed railway governance model and changes to a modular approach to governance.

Deep learning based Doppler frequency offset estimation for 5G-NR downlink in HSR scenario

In the fifth-generation new radio(5G-NR) high-speed railway(HSR) downlink,a deep learning(DL) based Doppler frequency offset(DFO) estimation scheme is proposed by using the back propagation neural network(BPNN).The proposed method mainly includes pre-training,training,and estimation phases,where the pre-training and training belong to the off-line stage,and the estimation is the online stage.To reduce the performance loss caused by the random initialization,the pre-training method is employed to acquire a desirable initialization,which is used as the initial parameters of the training phase.Moreover,the initial DFO estimation is used as input along with the received pilots to further improve the estimation accuracy.Different from the training phase,the initial DFO estimation in pre-training phase is obtained by the data and pilot symbols.Simulation results show that the mean squared error(MSE) performance of the proposed method is better than those of the available algorithms,and it has acceptable computational complexity.

High-Performance Broadcasting Algorithms on Cluster

In many clusters connected by high-speed communication networks, the exact structure of the underlying communication network and the latency difference between different sending and receiving pairs may be ignored when they broadcast, such as in the approach adopted by the broadcasting method in MPICH, a widely used MPI implementation. However, the underlying network cluster topologies are becoming more and more complicated and the performance of traditional broadcasting algorithms, such as MPICHs MPI_Bcast, is far from good. This paper analyzed the impact of communication latencies and the underlying topologies on the performance of broadcasting algorithms for multilevel clusters. A multilevel model was developed for broadcasting in clusters with complicated topologies, which divides the cluster topology into many levels based on the underlying topology. The multilevel model was used to develop a new broadcast algorithm, MLM broadcast-2 (MLMB-2), that adapts to a wide range of clusters. Comparison of the performance of the counterpart MPI operation MPI_Bcast and MLMB-2 shows that MLMB-2 outperforms MPI_Bcast by decreasing the broadcast running time by 60%-90%.