GATE4RAIL Project

About GATE4RAIL

GNSS Automated Virtualized Test Environment for Rail (GATE4Rail) deals with tasks TD2.4 and TD2.6 of the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan. Particularly, its main goals are: i) achieving a realistic characterization of the environment in terms of railway and GNSS infrastrustructures able to evaluate the performances and properties of some fail-safe train positioning components in nominal and fault conditions; ii) defining a common test process framework for zero on-site testing instead of testing on-site saving effort and time.

Concerning the first goal, GATE4RAIL will define and develop a geo-distributed simulation and verification infrastructure connecting remotely GNSS excellence centres and ERTMS/ETCS laboratories to evaluate the GNSS performances in the railway environment. Proper methodology and tools will be identified to simulate GNSS behaviour in different railway scenarios in nominal or in presence of global and local hazards.
In this sense, GATE4Rail offers the unique advantage to stress the global system in presence of very rare fault events instead of performing long and expensive measurement campaigns on field for detecting them and analysing their impact on ETCS. Then, a standardized method to derive and describe GNSS and railway test cases will be developed.

Concerning the second goal, GATE4RAIL will develop methodology and tools for automated update of tests environment, continuous integration, their automated repetition and evaluation through Model-Based System Engineering philosophy. It will ensure that the simulation infrastructure can be maintained and extended reducing the need for re-assessments, increasing the test environment efficiency. The entire process will account for the Notified Body requirements, so that in the future it can be approved by an independent Safety Assessor.

A demo on representative railway lines in Italy and Spain will be deployed at the end of the project to show the all functionalities and tools developed in GATE4Rail.