A novel communication-based train control (CBTC) system with coordinated multi-point transmission and reception

Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) system is an automated train control system using bidirectional train-ground communications to ensure the safe operation of rail vehicles. Due to unreliable wireless communications and frequent handoff, existing CBTC systems can severely affect train control performance. In this paper, we use recent advances in Coordinated Multi-Point transmission and reception (CoMP) to enhance the train control performance of CBTC systems. In addition, unlike the exiting works on CoMP, linear quadratic cost for the train control performance in CBTC systems is considered as the performance measure. Moreover, we propose an optimal guidance trajectory calculation scheme in the train control procedure that takes full consideration of the tracking error caused by handoff latency. Simulation results show that the train control performance can be improved substantially in our proposed CBTC system with CoMP.