W19 – Workshop on 5G&Beyond for Railways Challenges and Opportunities for Operational and Passenger Connectivity

Co-organizer: Marion Berbineau, Université Gustave Eiffel, France
Co-organizer: Paul Unterhuber, German Aerospace Center, Germany
Co-organizer: Ke Guan, Beijing Jiaotong University, China

Program:

Workshop 19 on 5G&Beyond for Railways

Challenges and Opportunities for Operational and Passenger Connectivity

09:00-09:05	Welcome and opening of the workshop
09:05-09:25	RAT Switching Strategies and Link Recovery in a Three-Layer Pods4Rail Architecture, Dereje Mechal Molla, Léo Mendiboure, Sassi Maaloul, Dingyang Liu, Marion Berbineau
09:25-09:45	A comprehensive evaluation on Operational connectivity for Future railways communications, David Kule Mukuhi, Léo Mendiboure, Rami Langar, Sylvain cherrier, Marion Berbineau, Pierre-Yves Petton, Rodrigue Fargeon
09:45-10:05	Queue-Aware Deep Reinforcement Learning for Joint Beam and Power Control in mmWave FRMCS, Mohammad Javadi, Shahab Ehsanfar, Klaus Moessner
10:05-10:25	Adaptive Handover Optimization in High-Speed Rail Using Proximal Policy Optimization, Xinhan Feng, Yue Xiao, Heng Liu, Liu Yang, Wei Chen, Zheng Ma
10:25-10:45	Coffee Break
10:45-11:05	5G for Railways Over Leaky Coaxial Cables: Experimental Validation on an FRMCS Testbed, Hefdhallah Sakran, Shahab Ehsanfar, Charbel Lahoud, Klaus Moessner, Technical University Chemnitz
11:05-11:25	Channel Measurements in a Railway Environment for 5G-Based FRMCS Deployment, Frédéric Munoz, Kai Mao, Raffaele Derrico, Chadli Hadji, Gilles Boistault, Marion Berbineau
11:25-11:45	Measurement-Based Assessment of FRMCS Downlink Coexistence with 5G Band 1 Uplink, Michael Meiseneder, Herbert Koblmiller, Philipp Svoboda
11:45-12:05	Train-to-Train Short Range Communication and Relative Localization based on IEEE802.15.4, Paul Unterhuber, Martin Schmidhammer, Christian Gentner, Benedikt Merk, Benjamin Siebler, Andreas Lehner, Fabian de Ponte Müller, Ibrahim Rashdan, Dominik Egginger,
12:05-12:25	Experimental Evaluation of Multipath TQUIC for Mission-Critical Communications, Pedram Delavari, Shahab Ehsanfar, Reza Moheimani, Klaus Moessner
LUNCH
14:00-14:20	Effect of Statistical Building Features on Railway Channels: Large-Scale Fading Characterizations, Qingchi Qin, Kai Mao, Marion Berbineau, Mingqi Guo, Qiuming Zhu
14:20-14:40	Ray-tracing modelling and experimental evaluation of railway rural propagation channel, Thierry Tenoux, Yoann Corre, Patrice Pajusco, Ahmed Abdelghany, Jamaleddine Amghar
14:40-15:00	5G-R Channel Characterization based on Measurement-calibrated Ray Tracing at 2.16 GHz for Inside-Station and Viaduct Scenarios, Shan Luo, Beijing Jiaotong University, Danping He, Lei Yang, Jing Cao, Yueyao Liu, Lei Han, Tingting Gao, Ke Guan
15:00-15:20	Physics-Aware Ka-band Satellite Channel Prediction for Remote Railway Communications, Haobo Zhang, Chen Chen, Dan Fei, LiuLiu, Bo Ai
15:20-15:40	Low Earth Orbit Satellites and 5G Data Acquisition for Railway Applications, Wael CHERIF,Christophe Vitry,Veli Alperen SEZER, Nerea Fernández Berrueta, Pierre Le Corre
15:40-16:00	COFFEE
16:00-16:20	Evaluating Edge Computing Deployment Options in Hybrid 5G–LEO Railway Communication Systems, Léo Mendiboure, Mohamed Coulibaly, David KULE MUKUHI, Romain Dulout,
16:20-16:40	Cooperative Localization of Trains with Magnetic Field Measurements and Radio-based Ranging, Benedikt Merk, Benjamin Siebler, Paul Unterhuber, Andreas Lehner, Stephan Sand

 

Abstract: As the railway industry strives to improve customer experience, quality, reliability, safety and security of railway systems, we observe ever increasing information flows between all stakeholders. This trend is accentuated by the latest development of autonomous and connected trains that will need high-performance communications technologies such as 5G and beyond. Some challenges for 5G & Beyond for railways include extreme mobility, robustness, reliability, high capacity everywhere, Non Terrestrial Networks (NTN), hybridization, spectral efficiency, radio resource scarcity, low latency, low energy consumption and resilience to interference. Safety and security are among the top requirements for railways, including cybersecurity.

Evaluating the performance of 5G-based systems and future 6G ones in the context of railway operation requires radio channel models for numerous environments and frequencies (900 MH and 1900 MHz) and also millimetric waves. Dedicated antennas need to be developed with adequate performance and placement. Innovative solutions at the network level are also needed: complex handover, scheduling aspects, as well as the incorporation of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and/or Network Function Virtualization (NFV), hybridization with NTN, introduction of AI for optimization and prediction. 5G and Beyond architecture promises to deliver significant benefits, including but not limited to, improved service availability, increased reliability and higher throughput Capabilities of radio based ranging, localization and sensing is of interest in the railway domain to support future safety critical applications or serve as an additional source of information for existing systems. The Internet of Things is also a hot topic for railway in the context of diagnosis and predictive maintenance of both track and rolling stock. At the same time, a lot of developments are currently ongoing to support the development and deployment of the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS). This workshop will enable researchers to present the latest results addressing the aforementioned challenges in the context of 5G & beyond for railways within the FRMCS landscape.

The topics of the workshop in the context of railways are:
• Requirements and emerging applications for railway communications
• Propagation, railway channel measurements and models for 5G & Beyond
• Antenna requirements & designs, antenna systems and integration for railways and trains
• Radio based ranging, localization and sensing in the railway domain
• Heterogeneous handover, SDN, NFV
• Scheduling, resource allocation and optimization and routing
• Service availability, increased reliability, higher throughput and lower latency
• Sensor networks
• FRMCS deployments and enhancements
• Satellite for FRMCS, 6G and NTN
• Multi-bearer and multi-band techniques and architectures, resource allocation and optimization
• Network and cyber-security and authentication for critical and non-critical services
• Ultra-low power techniques, architectures and technologies
• Edge processing, caching, fronthaul and backhaul techniques for railway connectivity
• Evolution beyond 6G, ISAC for railways

Co-organizer’s Bios:

Marion Berbineau: 

Dr Marion Berbineau received the Engineer degree from Polytech’Lille (France) and the Ph.D. degree from the Univ. of Lille, both in electrical engineering, respectively in 1986 and 1989. She is a full time Research Director at Université Gustave Eiffel in France, in the Component and SYStem department. She is associated researcher at LEOST laboratory. She is expert in the fields of radio wave propagation and signal processing in transport environments (particularly in railway tunnels and high-speed lines), electromagnetic modeling, channel characterization and modeling, MIMO, wireless systems for telecommunications, cognitive radio for railways and GNSS localization-based system for ITS particularly for the rail and public transport domains. She is responsible for Railway research coordination for the University. She is active as an expert for the GSM-R and FRMCS and future systems like 5G NR and beyond 5G. She is involved and leader of several National and European research projects. She is author and co-author of several publications and patents. She is expert at the French national council for the railway system. She is chair of EURNEX and vice-chair of ERRAC.

Paul Unterhuber:

Paul Unterhuber received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the M.Sc. degree in engineering and business from the Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria in 2013 and 2014,
respectively. In 2022 he received his Dr.-Ing. degree from Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. Since 2015, he has been with the Institute of Communications and Navigation at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He has been participating in several national and international research projects, e.g. V2X-DuRail, X2-Rail, R2DATO and PODS4RAIL. His research interests are on channel sounding, propagation and modeling with a focus on train-to-train communications, and joint communication and sensing for railway applications. He is author and co-author of several publications and patents. He contributed to IEEE 802.11bd Enhancements for Next Generation V2X standard and the ETSI RT JTFIR standardization body.

Ke Guan:

Dr. Ke Guan is a Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Rail Autonomous Operation and the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University. He also serves as the Head of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Digital Twin Assisted AI for Sustainable RAN in Austria. In 2025, he was elected as an IET Fellow, and was recognized as one of the Top 10 Overseas Chinese Science and Technology Leaders in Europe. He was elected as a Life Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in 2024 and was awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship in 2016. From February to July 2023, he served as a Guest Professor at Technische Universität Wien in Austria. Dr. Guan made significant contributions to the clutter loss model in ITU-R P.2108 and the THz channel model in IEEE 802.15.3d-2017. He has authored or co-authored two books, five book chapters, over 200 journal and conference papers, and more than 20 patents. His project TwinSWAN received the 2024 IET Excellence and Innovation Awards. Additionally, his publications have earned 14 Best Paper Awards, including the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Neal Shepherd Memorial Best Propagation Paper Award in both 2019 and 2022. His current research interests include the measurement and modeling of wireless propagation channels, high-speed railway communications, and digital twin of electromagnetic propagation environments in various complex scenarios based on ray-tracing and machine learning.

Paper submission deadline Extended: 8 February 2026
Acceptance notification: 18 March 2026
Final paper submission deadline Extended: 7 April 2026

Submission requirements: 5-page paper (without overlength charge) and up to 2 additional pages are allowed with the purchase of additional page charges in the amount of $100 USD per additional page at the time of registration and final paper submission.

Paper submission can be located here: https://vtc2026s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/