Ciaffi, Massimiliano, Marais, Juliette, Emmanuele, Giusy, Garcia Crespillo, Omar, Coluccia, Andrea, Vennarini, Alessia, Sabina, Salvatore, Kazim, Syed Ali, Gerbeth, Daniel, Caamano Albuerne, Maria, Neri, Alessandro, Razzano, Elena, Senesi, Fabio, Italian railway infrastructure manager, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana RFI, Laboratoire Électronique Ondes et Signaux pour les Transports (IFSTTAR/COSYS/LEOST), Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux (IFSTTAR)-PRES Université Lille Nord de France, DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation [Oberpfaffenhofen-Wessling] (KN), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Radiolabs, Hitachi Rail, EC/H2020/776039/ERTMS on SATELLITE Galileo Game Changer Funding/ERSAT GCC, and Cadic, Ifsttar
WCRR 2019, 12th World Congress on Railway Research, Tokyo, JAPON, 28-/10/2019 - 01/11/2019; The use of GNSS positioning into the ERTMS/ETCS has been identified as the technology for supporting the detection of Virtual Balises (VB). However, the presence of local GNSS threats (e.g. multipath, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) or interference) that may not be detectable by a local or wide area augmentation network, can potentially lead to unbounded errors in the pseudorange measurement and ultimately to an error in the VB position that cannot be bounded with the required integrity. In order to prevent a priori the risk of this hazardous situation, VB must be located in areas there are no local threats that may lead a Virtual Balise Reader (VBR) on board the train to dynamically estimate unbounded virtual balise position errors. The ERSAT-GGC project has been funded to tackle with this challenge. This paper aims to present the techniques and methods developed to characterize track areas to know a priori which track portions are suitable for placing VBs. They will rely on basic equipment that every stakeholder shall be able to install and use, composed of a COTS GNSS receiver providing raw data and, when necessary, a spectrum analyzer. The paper describes and illustrates the selected techniques.