Railway & Transport

Safe & Secure Embedded Software

Increasing rail network complexity and number of passengers or devices with a high demand of connectivity keep challenging Railway experts: Though it is getting more difficult to handle these challenges, embedded technology is becoming the loophole with the potential to improve these fields. Embedded multi-core systems introduce innovations such as machine learning, networked rail systems and autonomous or assisted driving such as Automatic Train Operation (ATO) using upcoming European Train Control Systems (ETCS). Thus, making the Railway and Transportation industry ready for the future.

Safety Level up to

SIL 4

PikeOS and ELinOS in Railway

Brake & Traction Control System

Brake and traction control systems have to make sure that it is possible to use and maintain the brakes as efficiently as possible. Therefore, a whole lot of meta-data has to be gathered all the time. Part of this meta-data is immediately used by the system to adjust itself, while other data has to be propagated to other systems analysed elsewhere. This deferred analysis and results thereof should then be also able to individually adjust the brake and traction control system when validated. To shorten time-to-market and reduce implementation complexity and certification efforts, the brake and traction control systems basic functionality – controlling the brakes – should be implemented as most of the other automation industry control functionalities, thus through a PLC (Programmable Logic Control).

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Train Wayside Communication

Critical communication, performance communication and passenger communication may find its way through the same 5G rolling stock gateway. Today’s existing multi-modem 4G routers are only used for passenger communication or other non-critical data. This is due to the existing GSM-R network and the lack of safe and secure solutions for that matter. But due to the ever-increasing data communication bandwidth demand of emerging technologies (e.g. for autonomous rolling stock operations) the current GSM-R network will not be sufficient. Thus, new 5G multi-modem gateways with Safety & Security assurance, and therefore usable for all kinds of communication, will be vital for the success of these new technologies.

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How to Design Safety-Critical Embedded Software for Autonomous Trains

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Train Screenboard / Driver Display

Driver display systems (or screen boards) are becoming more and more complex, while integrating highly critical with commodity functions. This trend will continue, leading to configurable multi-function displays (MFDs), as already seen in Avionics or Automotive cockpits. This requires the possibility to run Safety critical UI components, which are to be certified, and in parallel enable feature rich non-critical commodity UI. The later requires the use of standard components, while focusing on a sophisticated UI representation (e.g. through 2D/3D acceleration and rendering through hardware). Safety-critical user interface components will focus on a leaner approach in order to reduce risk and cost of the certification while using a pre-certified UI framework.

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Train Control System

Flexibility and scalability are the most prominent needs for future train control system software platforms. The requirement of being pre-certified up to the highest assurance level according to EN 50128 is self-evident.

Flexibility shall allow for various heterogeneous functions, legacy applications and sub-systems to be seamlessly integrated and to assure the highest level of independence from the underlaying hardware architecture.
Scalability shall ensure that, whatever complexity, performance, Safety and Security demands the final use-case may require, the software platform doesn’t have to be changed.
Furthermore, it shall guarantee that the knowledge gained while developing the first system can be re-used for a number of systems to be developed in the future.

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The partnership with SYSGO extends the scope of congatec’s existing automation, collaborative robotics and railway platforms to safety and security-critical systems. And this cooperation makes great sense for both partners, now that the latest platforms from NXP and Intel make it possible for the first time to develop functional safety-critical systems without additional hardware.

Christian Eder
Director Marketing at congatec

SYSGO’s PikeOS 5 expands capability of NXPs popular i.MX 8X family of applications processors for the high demands of critical embedded system infrastructure in industrial automation, automotive, railway and avionics. Automotive and Industrial Transportation systems can leverage the hardware separation capability and safe OS to achieve reliable systems that are critical for the safety of the users.

Ron Martino
Senior Vice President and General Manager,
Edge Processing Business, NXP Semiconductors

Targeting extremely critical embedded applications in the avionics, automotive, railway, and other industries, SYSGO is a perfect fit for our proven security technologies. We are happy to work with the European leader, giving us additional presence on the continent and worldwide.

Larry Stefonic
CEO at wolfSSL

With our cooperation and the joint development of an integrated platform, we want to enable such customers to accelerate the development of their systems and significantly reduce the effort for certification. Both Kontron and SYSGO offer certification kits with detailed product documentation.

Robert Negre
VP of business development at Kontron

We are delighted to be part of this world premiere. Our collaboration with SYSGO has always been successful, but the SIL 4 certification of PikeOS on our VX3035 board further enhances the competitiveness of our joint offering for all safety-critical markets.

Robert Negre
Head of RAIL Business Uit at Kontron

Functional Safety

PikeOS is pre-certified according to EN 50128 and EN 50657 SIL4 and enables embedded software engineers to build outstanding embedded Railway software fulfilling strong Safety demands.

EN 50128 / EN 50657 Certification Kit

Security

The PikeOS separation kernel itself is small in terms of implementation and its little number of system calls allows comprehensive evaluation and validation. As a matter of fact, PikeOS 5.1.3 (x86 64-bit, ARMv8, PowerPC) has passed the Common Criteria EAL5+ certification.

More about Security | Common Criteria Certification Kit

SAFe-VX

Turnkey-Ready Development Platform for Wayside Control Systems

Partitioning critical and non-critical application code in independent time and memory spaces:

SYSGO and Kontron present SAFe-VX, a turnkey-ready developing suite, providing fully representative hardware and a complete toolchain for software development, which is integrated into the Eclipse-based development environment called CODEO.

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Extreme Flexibility provides Independence from Suppliers in the Choice of Hardware and Software

PikeOS supports a broad range of hardware architectures and software interfaces. Easily adapt to new requirements and incorporate legacy technology.

Virtualization reduces Hardware Cost

Multiple applications can run simultaneously on a single hardware platform.

Integrated Safety reduces Certification Cost

Applications of various criticality and Security levels are safely separated from each other in distinct partitions and certified separately (like mixing SIL 1 and SIL 3).

Partitioning allows a pragmatic Linux Strategy

An integrated Linux guest OS, such as ELinOS, offers open-source features like network, GUI or web server. Your own intellectual properties, real-time functions and safety-critical applications run in separate partitions.