The development of communication networks has spread to a wide range of applications. Particularly, a vast amount of projects have taken place in Europe in the transport sector within the Telematic Application Program of the European Commission (DG XIII). To be more precise, the need for a communication system on board, capable of interconnecting all electronic subsystems has been detected. This would make the interoperability between devices and distributed control architectures easier, as well as improve the interconnection with other extern networks. This system is based in the standard IEC 61375-1, recently approved, also known as TCN (Train Communication Network).

This has risen the need for new circuits that conform to the new standard and allow a full development of the possibilities of the standards, establishing a design methodology for the verification and construction of the circuits, using the VHDL language. It is also a goal of the project to build a simulation environment to test the circuits in a simple and efficient way. The main goal is, thus, the development of this simulation environment and to establish the above mentioned methodology for the TCN network.

In addition to the teachers from UPV/EHU the research team for this project includes researchers from Centro Politécnico Superior of the University of Zaragoza and professionals from the company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S. A. (CAF).