Roadmap Towards the Wireless Virtual Coupling of Trains.

Today coupled trains have become an important bottleneck in terms of performance. Transmission through the auto-coupler is notably impaired by the contact nature and the performance of train communication backbone is much lower. Many times applications on both sides of the coupling point are incompatible, due to different implementations, versions, or retrofitting statuses. Solution comes by providing the so called virtual coupling, where the consists run together, as coupled, but without any physical connection, thus trains manufactured by different companies and with different interfaces could be virtually coupled, driven together by the leading cabin and sharing the same traffic slot. In this paper the virtual coupling is introduced together with the technologies required for its implementation which will be developed within the Shift2Rail initiative.