A cognitive control approach to interference mitigation in communications-based train control (CBTC) co-existing with passenger information systems (PISs)

Abstract As a key component of urban rail transit systems, communications-based train control (CBTC) is an automated train control system using train-ground communications to ensure efficient operation of rail vehicles. In addition to CBTC systems, passenger information systems (PISs) are adopted in urban rail transit systems to improve quality of service (QoS) offered to customers. The interference between CBTC systems and PISs is an important factor impacting QoS of both CBTC systems and PISs. With recent advances in cognitive dynamic systems, in this paper, we take a cognitive control approach to interference mitigation considering the co-existence of CBTC systems and PISs. In our cognitive control approach, the notion of information gap is adopted to quantitatively describe effects of interference on CBTC. The wireless channel is modeled as a finite-state Markov chain with multiple state transition probability matrices, which are derived from real field measurements. Simulation results show that the proposed cognitive control approach can significantly improve performance of CBTC train-ground communications under interference from co-existing PISs.