Redundant Route Control Centers for Fault-Tolerant Rail Operations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for managing driving operations of track-guided vehicles in route networks with redundant route control centers face limitations in ensuring operational safety and availability, particularly in maintaining data connections and handling operational mode transitions between centers.
Innovation Solution
The method involves preconfiguring two route control centers with distinct Internet Protocol addresses for each data transmission path, allowing them to operate in active or passive modes, and using switching devices to manage data paths, ensuring seamless information transmission and redundancy in case of failures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If two route control centers are redundantly preconfigured with identical addresses for data transmission paths, then operational availability is improved through automatic failover capability, but address conflict and data transmission errors may occur without proper address differentiation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by assigning different IP addresses to route control centers based on their specific data transmission paths. Each center has identical addresses for paths connecting to the same route components (enabling redundancy) but different addresses for paths connecting to different route components (preventing conflicts). This localized address differentiation resolves the contradiction between maintaining operational availability through redundancy and preventing data transmission errors through address uniqueness.
2Device complexity
If route control centers use centralized additional routing center configuration, then system complexity is reduced, but operational restrictions and single points of failure increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the centralized routing control into distributed route control centers, each capable of independent operation. Instead of one centralized additional routing center, multiple route control centers are configured with identical data connections to route components, allowing any center to take over operations independently. This segmentation eliminates single points of failure and operational restrictions while maintaining manageable complexity through standardized configurations.
3Reliability
If route control centers are configured with identical data connections for redundancy, then failover capability is improved, but the risk of address conflicts and data transmission errors increases without proper address management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the address parameter dynamically based on the data transmission path context. Route control centers use identical IP addresses when communicating with the same route components (maintaining redundancy) but use different IP addresses when communicating with different route components (avoiding conflicts). This parameter change approach allows the system to maintain failover capability while eliminating address conflicts through context-dependent address assignment.
Data Source
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AI summary
The invention relates to a method for operating track-guided vehicles (T) in a track network (SN) divided into track sections (SB1, SB2, SB3), wherein each of the track sections (SB1, SB2, SB3) is assigned a first track control center (RBC11, RBC21, RBC31) and wherein at least one additional track control center (RBC22) is provided. In order to better address operational limitations during operation, it is provided that the additional track control center (RBC22) is assigned to one of the track sections (SB2) as a second track control center, wherein the two track control centers (RBC21, RBC22) assigned to one track section (SB2) are redundantly preconfigured, particularly with regard to their data connections to other track components (OCS, MSC, KMC, EI) that are suitable for operating the vehicle in that one track section (SB2).The invention also relates to an arrangement (A; A*) for carrying out the operation of track-guided vehicles (T) in a track network (SN) divided into track sections (SB1, SB2, SB3).