KEEPING RAIL PROJECTS ON TRACK AND ON TIME: SOLUTIONS FOR MASTERING COMPLEX TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES By Alexander Damisch, Director, Industrial Markets

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1 KEEPING RAIL PROJECTS ON TRACK AND ON TIME: SOLUTIONS FOR MASTERING COMPLEX TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES By Alexander Damisch, Director, Industrial Markets INNOVATORS START HERE.

2 EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW Safe, efficient, reliable, and cost-effective mass transportation is a priority issue for governments around the world. Rail transit is widely viewed as essential to getting cars off the road and reducing fossil fuel dependence; yet it is often a political hot button because of the huge amount of public funds involved. Rail projects are notorious for budget overruns and delays. For builders of rail equipment and systems, the challenges are compounded by pressure to bring projects to completion quickly, while ensuring that stringent safety and certification standards are met. The technology required to transport more people safely, comfortably, and on schedule is increasingly complex and complexity carries greater risk of failure and vulnerability, along with higher development and maintenance costs. This paper explores the challenges manufacturers face and how technology choices made early in the system-design process can mitigate them. It explains how approaches proven in the aerospace industry where physical space is limited and safety is paramount can reduce risks and costs, accelerate development time, simplify maintenance, and create a safer, more enjoyable experience for the passenger. TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Overview Today s Trains: Connected Communications Hubs Multiple Systems for Multitasking Growing Cyber-threat Meeting Certification Requirements Divide and Conquer: The Virtue of Virtualization What Trains Can Learn from Planes The Right Development Partner... 4 Conclusion White Paper INNOVATORS START HERE.

3 TODAY S TRAINS: CONNECTED COMMUNICATIONS HUBS From Europe s long-distance travel networks to light-rail commuter lines in America to the unmanned monorails whisking travelers around airports, today s rail systems are reliant on increasingly intricate automation technology and cloud-based connectivity. Railway vehicles have become connected information hubs. Passengers see this in the form of information screens and nextstop announcements, and, in some cases, such amenities as intrain Wi-Fi. Connectivity helps make the time spent in transit more enjoyable or productive. The same technology that allows passengers to know when they are approaching their stops also allows operators to know exactly where a train is and how well it is operating. Positive Train Control (PTC) systems enable trains to know their position relative to all the other trains in their network with GPS precision. Machineto-machine communication, centrally managed in a cloud-based architecture, enables operators to utilize equipment, tracks, and stations more efficiently while dramatically reducing the risk of accidental collisions. MULTIPLE SYSTEMS FOR MULTITASKING Safety, speed, control, convenience the myriad tasks that systems must perform means that modern trains must carry multiple systems. The challenge for equipment manufacturers is to include these complex systems without taking up valuable space, adding weight, or driving up costs. The systems must also be configured in a way that they do not interfere with each other that a breakdown in the passenger information system, for example, does not disrupt communications from the train to its controllers. The conventional way to split safety-critical applications from other systems has been to house them in separate hardware. While this approach may guarantee physical separation, it has proven costly, is an inefficient use of the limited space on board, and increases energy consumption. There are practical issues as well with development, testing, interoperability, and product life cycles, as each piece of equipment will have its own certification and obsolescence management cycle. Operational Control Center Train Control Communications High A Authority Management Server Remote Users Train Control Servers Training/Train Controller/ Transit Manager *n UPS TCP/IP Router Wireless Network Authority Server, Trainborne, Wayside GPS Location Determination Trainborne Diagnostic Support Trackside Crossing Defect Detectors Control Point Rail-Rail Interfaces Key Local Communications Wayside Interface Units (WIUs) Architecture of a positive train control system 2 White Paper

4 GROWING CYBER-THREAT Another challenge developers must confront is the escalation in unauthorized intrusion. As rail systems rely more on wireless connectivity, they become more vulnerable to hacking. The consequences of even a small disruption become particularly severe as trains become more powerful, carry more passengers, and travel faster. A train traveling at more than 300 kilometers per hour relies heavily on automation and connectivity because human drivers cannot make all the necessary decisions at that speed. Yet the very systems that are critical for safe operation could be brought down by a simple electronic device, a mobile phone, or a small piece of malicious code downloaded from the Internet. This became reality in 2009, when a bored but clever Polish teenager used a modified TV remote control to change the points on the tram system in the city of Lodz, derailing four cars and injuring 12 people. Protection against failures has always been a key part of transportation equipment design, but now engineers have to protect against system intrusion and modification. Whether deliberate or accidental, an intrusion can disrupt service, at a minimum, and, in the worst case, cause a severe and perhaps deadly accident. The threat of increasing cyber-attacks underscores the need to keep systems and functions separate, so that if an intruder or malware infects one system it does not spread to others. MEETING CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS To protect against these risks, rail equipment makers need practical ways to build connected systems and to enforce the separation, isolation, and protection between general-purpose and safety-critical systems. Manufacturers also need to reduce the certification and approval costs for their systems and get to market on a faster, more predictable timetable. There was a time when equipment manufacturers tended to build their own hardware and proprietary on-board applications. More recently, in the effort to control costs and accelerate time-to-market, more manufacturers are turning to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology solutions. Besides the cost and time savings in development and maintenance, the move to open standards enables vendors to be more competitive in an increasingly global market. However, the stringent testing and certification regimes for vehicles and control systems pose a challenge in using COTS applications for safety-ready platforms, or in sharing resources between critical and less critical applications with different certification requirements. This is of particular concern when railway vehicles are sold into different national markets. Each country might need different versions of systems that need to be recertified. If vehicle manufacturers and their systems-development partners do not follow strict guidelines, there can be serious issues of liability as well as practical risks. DIVIDE AND CONQUER: THE VIRTUE OF VIRTUALIZATION The most practical solution is to use technology that enables multiple operating systems and applications to run on a single device but splits critical and less critical applications so that each operates independently. If one fails or is attacked by a hacker, it will not disrupt any other. Commercial multi-core processors and virtualization software now allow for time and space separation of functions, optimized for both safety-critical and security-conscious designs. Virtualization, either on a single core or a multi-core device, allows different applications to run in safe and secure partitions, separated from each other and controlled by a partitioning hypervisor. Applying embedded virtualization to transport systems vastly improves the business case for higher levels of automation and improved communications. It allows developers to create systems with small footprints, keeping certification times down. It allows more than one system to run at the same time on low-cost hardware while providing the time and space separation needed to run different levels of critical functions, safety, and redundancy. 3 White Paper

5 Not all safety-critical applications require large amounts of computing resources. Using embedded virtualization to combine several applications is feasible with well-designed software. Commodity multi-core computer processors make it easier for train and rail system designers to combine multiple applications on a single processor, or CPU, instead of using several different proprietary circuits. Eliminating multiple custom boards greatly simplifies maintenance over the long term. In testing and certification, virtualization brings a further advantage. Designers can split applications into components that run independently on separate virtual but not physical machines. If a manufacturer wants to sell a railway vehicle in different markets, and its systems need to be recertified to meet local rules, only the parts that change need to be tested again, or rewritten. This can potentially produce a big cost savings while reducing time-tomarket. It also helps make the system scalable and future-proof, which is a key requirement for both the equipment maker and the train or tram operator. Partitioning also helps reduce vulnerability to attacks. Each partition can run its own small firewall rather than relying on one main firewall, in which a breach could give an intruder access to the whole system. If one minor application is compromised, the intrusion is limited to one partition where it can easily be detected and disinfected, saving considerable time and money and reducing safety risks. This also stops intrusions from spreading across system components, particularly from malware. Importantly, it prevents hackers from accessing the network stack to launch other attacks or take remote control of the vehicle. An added benefit is improved uptime of services because individual partitions can be rebooted or even reprogrammed, without affecting other services on the same device. WHAT TRAINS CAN LEARN FROM PLANES Embedded virtualization and system partitioning have been welltested and adopted for years in markets where performance, reliability, and safety are critical, such as aerospace and defense. Used correctly, embedded virtualization in rail vehicles and control systems offers developers a way to deploy more technology that can improve efficiency, performance, and security and can be tested and certified at a reasonable cost. It allows designers to meet customer, compliance, and regulatory requirements, minimizing the risks and liability issues that could arise if systems are not fully tested. THE RIGHT DEVELOPMENT PARTNER In the effort to manage complexity, control costs, streamline development, and deliver a product that performs to expectations, it is not simply a matter of finding the right technology platform but also the right technology partner. The solution has to be backed by solid service and support that will assure certification and extend across the entire product life cycle. Wind River s VxWorks real-time operating system offers the ability to create robust partitioning and has been deployed in a wide variety of safety- and security-critical applications, from medical devices to spacecraft, not to mention trains and rail systems. VxWorks is also inherently less susceptible to malware than standard COTS operating systems, as hackers are less experienced with its code base, and the development tools and ability to add code are much more restricted. Many designers are making more use of open source software such as Linux to reduce costs. It can take many weeks of development time to get open source software up and running without support, and a lack of long-term maintenance, longevity support, and obsolescence management can present a major problem 4 White Paper

6 with product life cycle requirements. COTS suppliers such as Wind River, however, can supply supported versions of Linux that streamline the development process, backed by an ongoing maintenance program that meets regulatory requirements. In building rail applications, much of the engineering effort is spent not in the development of the software but in the verification and validation required to demonstrate that the software conforms to standards. Wind River can provide the certification and test artifacts for common system components, significantly speeding up development time. The developer doesn t have to spend additional time and effort on the validation code needed to certify the whole system for safety or security but can instead concentrate on the added value of the application. This approach also has the advantage of allowing the addition of new services without having to recertify the entire system, saving considerable time and cost. CONCLUSION The mass transportation industry is under pressure from regulators, operators, and the fare-paying public to deliver reliable, safe, and secure rail equipment and systems within tight budgets and timetables. Technology plays an increasingly important role in everything from operating trains to assigning tracks to entertaining passengers. And as technology becomes more complex, it adds to the challenges of controlling costs, keeping projects on schedule, and meeting certification standards. Commercial technology that enables developers to run multiple functions separately on a single multi-core processor goes a long way toward meeting these challenges. It streamlines development, reduces costs, improves overall system efficiency, simplifies maintenance, and affords greater protection from outside intrusion. The right technology decision at the design stage will enable manufacturers to keep rail projects on track and on time. Wind River is a is world a world leader leader in embedded in embedded software and for mobile intelligent software. connected Wind systems. River has The been company pioneering has been computing pioneering inside computing embedded inside embedded devices since devices 1981, since and 1981, its and technology its technology is found is found in more in nearly than 21 billion products. To Wind learn more, River visit headquartered Wind River at Alameda, California, with offices in more than 20 countries. To learn more, visit Wind River at Wind Wind River River Systems, Inc. Inc. The The Wind Wind River River logo logo is is a a trademark of of Wind River Systems,Inc., Inc., and and Wind River and VxWorks are are registered trademarks of of Wind River Systems, Inc. Rev. 01/ /2012