A Multi-Mode Multi-Band and Multi-System-Based Access Architecture for High-Speed Railways

With the rapid development of high-speed railways all over the world, it is very promising to deliver public broadband access to passengers aboard high-speed trains. However, it has been a challenge to support high speed (e.g. above 350 km/h) mobile users with broadband communications, because of rapidly fading radio channels and Doppler frequency shift. This paper presents a review of network architectures providing broadband access to high-speed trains. A novel scheme referred as multimode multi-band and multi-system-based access architecture is proposed in this paper. It consists of three parts: (1) train network part that relays data to large number of users in carriages without changing their own terminals, (2) ground network part that deals with traffic from different operators´ networks, and (3) ground-to-train network part that connects the train network and ground network. Moreover, this architecture could support high mobility with broad bandwidth, seamless handover, scalable and cost-effective deployment.