Abstract
There has been renewed attention given to High Speed Railways (HSR) in the US, in terms of adapting more speed, reliability, increasing passenger capacity and providing passenger centric services. Any future Train-To-Ground (T2G) communication system therefore has to embrace reliable signaling and control-specific needs of HSR, while also catering towards the high performance networking demands of passengers. Segregation of T2G traffic into multi-frequency user/control plane separated traffic based on these respective requirements of train and passenger services may therefore provide a unique opportunity to US railroads to achieve a cost-effective yet future-proof solution fully embracing fifth-generation wireless communication paradigms. Built upon this vision we propose a logical cell and sector-based multi-railcar MIMO solution for railroad micro-/mmWave base stations to support the high performance demand imposed upon user plane traffic in HSR. The logical cells and sectors are developed solely based on railcar outdoor antennas, which can provide an optimal performance throughout the coverage area, regardless of the track-to-base station distance. The proposed UPWARC simulation results have shown great reliability and spectral efficiency compared to the conventional architectures. This is due to attaining optimality and granularity in network design, exploiting precise operation of high speed train and linear movement.