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).
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.
Train Driver Cockpit
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.
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.
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.
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 (4.2.3 Build S5577 x86_64, ARM v7/8) has passed the Common Criteria EAL3+ certification.
SAFe-VX
Turnkey-Ready Development Platform
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.
Benefits
The contradiction between rapidly changing electronics and long-life cycle of Railway systems requires an intelligent and extensible system architecture that honors older legacy components while being open to easily adding components based on new architectures.
The modularity and flexibility of PikeOS allows fast adaptation to new hardware or software and brings predictability to life cycle cost:
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 levels of criticality and Security are Safely-separated from one another in distinct partitions and certified separately (i.e. 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