Trains & Railways

Modern trains - long-haul, high-speed, light-rail, subway - have built-in intelligence throughout which makes travelling fast, safe, reliable and comfortable. Innovation across all aspects of on-board and wayside system design improve performance and efficiency while also enhancing safety and security. 

On-board control systems process data from a large variety of cabin components including doors, lighting, cameras, air conditioning, brakes, lavatories, displays, diagnosis functions and power management – often in real time and always with resilient methods.

Wayside objects ensure safe traffic control with intelligent signaling and manage the power distribution along the tracks and on platforms, provide secure video surveillance and supports the passenger on the platform with HMIs, displays and other information systems. Enhanced requirements concerning availability and built-in diagnostics as well as the compatibility to networks are mandatory.

Only Xilinx combines scalable processing performance, deterministic programmable logic, certified design flows for functional safety and state-of-the-art security with long-term reliability over harsh conditions, and longevity of supply. Designers benefit from re-use across Xilinx the Zynq-7000 and Zynq UltraScale+ families of SoCs. This maximizes productivity for embedded and cloud-based software development investments across diverse applications such as:

• Energy efficient auxiliary, traction, and other motor control
• Resilient control of operator panels, brakes, diagnostic functions, power management
• Secure connectivity to wayside control and cloud-based trip optimization
• Real-time connected control of passenger safety and comfort amenities such as doors, lighting, air conditioning, lavatories, entertainment, and emergency communication systems

Xilinx solutions and design methods include Time Sensitive Networking for futureproof, real-time connectivity, a purpose-built architecture for Functional Safety, the integrated hardware root-of-trust, are indicative of a carefully planned scalable and adaptable industrial-grade embedded platform, not merely a common embedded processor. Partners in the Xilinx Ecosystem extend the offering with industry leading IP for a differentiation and can help with design implementation from foundational design support to domain-specific safety and security.

Proven capabilities

• Embedded AI-based predictive maintenance for critical sub-systems
• Modern and legacy connectivity protocols in one adaptable device
• Heterogeneous architecture to maximize performance/watt by offloading to overcome bottlenecks in processor-only architectures
• Advanced multi-sensor-based driver assistance features for front and surround awareness
• Runtime environments on Cortex A Cores for PLCs
• Machine Learning technology for advanced real-time embedded video surveillance capabilities in-camera
• Real-time analytics and machine learning
• Cybersecurity with cryptographic acceleration and 3rd party solutions to achieve consistency with recommendations from the Industrial Ethernet Consortium (IIC) and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG)
• Extended Product lifecycle, often over 15 years and more
• Secure OTA updates of software and digital logic with low downtimes