Optimizing Resource Allocation and Scheduling towards FRMCS and GSM-R networks coexistence in Railway Systems

Abstract: The actual railway communication system used in Europe for high-speed trains (HST) is called the GSM-R system, which is a communication system based on 2G infrastructure. This system is meant to be replaced by a new system based on 5G NR infrastructure called the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) by 2030. For the next years, both systems will probably coexist in the same frequency band since the migration from GSM-R to FRMCS is planned to be done progressively until the GSM-R system is completely shut down, mainly due to safety and budget constraints. In this paper, we study the resource allocation for the FRMCS system sharing the same frequency band as the already deployed GSM-R system. We formulate the resource allocation problem as an integer linear problem (ILP), known to be NP-hard.To solve it in a reasonable time, we propose a scheduling algorithm, called Intelligent Traffic Scheduling Preemptor (ITSP), that allocates resources for the different FRMCS traffic types considered (critical traffic and performance traffic) in the same frequency band with the GSM-R system. Our algorithm is channel quality Indicator (CQI) aware and uses the preemption mechanism in 5G NR standards to optimize the resource allocation for the FRMCS system without impacting the actual GSM-R resource allocation in the context of the white space concept.