Changing the future railway paradigm with a Korean-style train control system

Approved by Reporter Song Kang-sik 2024.03.14 09:20 Comments

[Engineering Journal Reporter Song Kang-sik] Railroads are a fast and convenient means of public transportation, but in the event of a safety accident, they can cause serious casualties, so train safety is considered an important factor that must be considered a top priority in railway technology.

In particular, the train control system can be said to be a core facility that ultimately guarantees the safety of train operation and increases the efficiency of railway operation. With the recent increase in the number of railway lines such as GTX, the importance of the train control system, which plays the role of the brain of the train, is increasing. is being emphasized more than ever.

Train control systems currently being applied in Korea are divided into urban railways, general railways, and high-speed railways, but most of them are foreign products, so there is a lack of domestic application. Moreover, the domestic existing train control system had the disadvantage of having different signaling methods for each route for each foreign product, delaying response in the event of a breakdown or accident, and taking a lot of time to repair the breakdown due to system aging.

In addition to the limitation of lack of compatibility as each route is operated with its own unique system, side effects such as foreign companies demanding high technical costs and time periods for expanding routes have also occurred.

In particular, as the size of the city has rapidly expanded recently, many new routes are being built, and existing signaling facilities are deteriorating, so interest in improving the train control system is growing.

As such, localization of the train control system is considered an essential task to reduce dependence on foreign technology and establish a safety system based on domestic technology.

Accordingly, the ‘KTCS (Korean Train Control System)’ developed by Hyundai Rotem Co., Ltd., which has led the domestic railway industry, through a national project with the goal of developing domestic technology, attracted attention not only domestically but also around the world.

KTCS, the world's first train control system using LTE, is the general name for the Korean train control system. Depending on the characteristics of the route to which it is applied, it is defined as KTCS-M (Metro) for urban railways and KTCS-2 for general and high-speed railways.

Kim Kyung-sik (photo), head of the Hyundai Rotem signal control research team, said, “KTCS is a signaling system that enables train control through two-way wireless communication using the domestic railway-specific wireless communication system (LTE-R). Based on the development of KTCS, the domestic railway train control system “It is a technology that is meaningful enough to develop a standardization model,” he said. “More data can be transmitted in real time through wireless communication than existing train control systems, and it is expected to reduce the gap between trains and increase safety.”

He continued, “The biggest reason why KTCS technology development was necessary was the standardization of the domestic train control system. Through the development of KTCS, it was possible to install domestically produced devices, and through the standardization of the domestic train control system, railway vehicles could be operated on various routes without system restrictions.” “We are now able to deploy it,” he added.

Since 2010, when the need for local production of train control systems emerged, Hyundai Rotem has been pursuing the first phase of the national policy project, 'Establishment and performance evaluation of a wireless communication-based train control system standard system for urban railways', and the second phase, 'General and high-speed rail'. We successfully completed the localization of the train control system through the ‘Development and commercialization of wireless communication and control system for mobile devices’.

Recently, the performance and safety verification of the system has been completed by successfully carrying out the Ilsan Line KTCS-M pilot project (completed in commercial operation) and the Jeolla Line KTCS-2 pilot project (in commercial operation) for the commercialization of KTCS.

In recognition of its technological prowess, Hyundai Rotem's KTCS-2 system recently garnered attention by winning the ‘IR (Industrial Research) 52 Jang Young-sil Award’. In 2013, Hyundai Rotem successfully supplied the independently developed ‘RF-CBTC on-board/ground ATP/ATO system’ to Almaty Metro Line 1 in Kazakhstan and won the Jang Young-sil Award.

In particular, Hyundai Rotem is Korea's largest railway vehicle manufacturer and has a track record of supplying a large number of vehicles, including unmanned vehicles, not only domestically but also overseas.

Team Leader Kim said, “The KTCS-M system has the advantage of being able to provide customer-friendly service functions that are differentiated from other companies, such as energy-saving driving, by identifying customer requirements in advance based on experience in interfacing with numerous unmanned and general vehicles. “Based on stable operation performance based on extensive experience, KTCS-2 is being applied to high-speed rail vehicles such as domestic EMU vehicles, contributing to the local production of train control systems. In particular, KTCS-2 meets European standards for compatibility with overseas signaling systems, so it is competitive for entering overseas markets.”

Based on these steady achievements, Hyundai Rotem plans to continue its efforts to expand the Korean train control system to railway lines across the country in the future. Accordingly, based on the recently successfully verified sales operation performance of the KTCS system, we plan to expand KTCS to routes nationwide and strengthen related technologies so that it can be applied to the entire national railway network in Korea.

Team Leader Kim said, “We plan to actively promote our train control system to domestic and foreign customers through presentations at academic conferences and exhibitions abroad,” and added, “Hyundai Rotem will continue to invest in research and development and strengthen competitiveness to gain trust from customers and expand its presence at home and abroad.” “We will become a leading company in train control systems that attracts attention in overseas markets as well.”

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Source: Engineering Journal (http://www.engjournal.co.kr)