Track-to-Train Transmission Method to Implement a New ATC System with Shorter Train Headway

Many types of continuous automatic train protection (ATP) systems, which are called automatic train control (ATC) systems in Japan, have been used over the years for safe train operations of Japanese rapid transit. In a preceding paper, we proposed a new ATC system that can offer a shorter train headway without either storing track profiles on trains or installing transponders on tracks, which are required on existing ATC systems to achieve such a shorter headway. As well as describing the basic concept and framework, we demonstrated effectiveness of the ATC system in that paper. However, a detailed discussion on the track-to-train transmission of required information to implement functions of the proposed system was not given. This paper analyses the impact of the information capacity on the headway and speed of trains under the conventional transmission method, proposes a new method that eliminates the negative impact on train operations providing the required capacity of information, and evaluates effectiveness of the new method.