Standards Development

Scope

This document shall provide additional information concerning safe data transmission communication protocols in accordance with IEC 62280.

This document shall be applicable for safety-related electrical, electronic and programmable electronic systems (E/E/PES including sub-systems and components) for railway signal applications. This document does not apply to safety protocols inside on-board train communication networks.

This document is not in contradiction with the horizontal standards on OT-Security / Cybersecurity.

This document provides information concerning safe data transmission protocols to support a decision for the use of one safety protocol out of a defined set for a given application. The document shall introduce the other three parts of the planned document containing the specifications of safety protocols. This includes commons and differences in the functionality and the expected surroundings.

Purpose

Due to ongoing modernization in rail infrastructure, the efficient coupling of systems from different suppliers is required. For this purpose, communication interfaces based on standard network communication are needed. From the operators’ point of view, it is essential to have a commonly accepted set of definitions and recommendations for safe data transmission protocols to define such interfaces within railway signaling systems over several protocol layers. This document shall supply and ease interface specifications in safety relevant railway signaling applications between different suppliers by giving a set of possible safety protocols. This proposal supports the safety target for electronic signaling systems and is not in contradiction to IEC 62278.

The need to establish an International Standard for safe transmission protocols according to IEC 62280 is also identified by EULYNX, the consortium of 17 European Railway Infrastructure Managers defining interface requirements from operators’ perspective. EULYNX member companies are part of the NCs.

Therefore, this NP is written and addressed to IEC/TC 9. The technical requirements are not limited to European applications and European Legal Framework. Thus, according to the Frankfurt Agreement, the proposer sees no justification to address this proposal to CENELEC only. A safe transmission protocol is applicable world-wide, the requirements can be adopted for specific application conditions. The relationship to IEC 62280 is not in contradiction to activities on IEC/TC 9 or on CENELEC/TC 9X level.

After establishment of IEC/TC 9/ahG 28 the involved experts of 12 countries identified the need to structure the documents in four parts for better understanding. Therefore, the NPs are based on the following structure:

Part 1: Generic aspects of safety related transmission protocols

Part 2: RBC-RBC Safe Communication Interface

Part 3: PVS: Safety related transmission protocol for application between ground systems

Part 4: Rail Safe Transport Application Protocol

IEC/TC 9/ahG 28 recommends publishing these documents with the same IEC number (e.g., 62xxx-1/-2/-3/-4).

The proposer and convenor of IEC/TC 9/ahG 28 gave a presentation on this NP at the 65th plenary meeting of IEC/TC 9 within the report of the ahG 28. The NPs were distributed as document 9(NDelhi/Secretariat)06.