The derailment of Amtrak train 188 in May of 2015 brought a system called Positive Train Control (PTC) into the headlines, but Professor Duminda Wijesekera of the Volgenau School of Engineering's Computer Science Department has been working on this and other systems that will make America's railroads safer for years. During a demonstration the Volgenau School of Engineering Radio and Radar Engineering Laboratory (VSE RARE Lab), Wijesekera described his work to a group of high profile visitors.
PTC is a supervisory control and data acquisition system designed to protect against loss of locomotive crew situational awareness that could result in train-to-train collision, train derailments due to excessive speed, trains crossing into roadway work zones, and movements through misaligned switches.
There is, however, a trade-off with this technology. "One of the most pressing problems with trains today is security," said Wijesekera, "Traditionally the nation used a signaling system that relied on rail workers being able to physically see the trains and the signal beacons."
With the implementation of PTC, in addition to the infrastructure challenges of implementing a wireless system across the nation's rail lines, there are legitimate concerns that the wireless messages broadcast openly on a signal frequency band that could be intercepted. For example, trains carrying hazardous chemicals that also pass through urban areas could be tampered with and cause serious danger to people who live in those areas.
The Volgenau School of Engineering, through its Radio and Radar Engineering Lab, is providing the Federal Railroad Administration with solutions for cyber security of the PTC infrastructure that explore the state-of-the-art in areas such as combined software/hardware encryption, cognitive radios, key management protocols, and others developed at the lab. This research places Mason as a major research partner of the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Railroad Administration, and a reliable academic supporter for the leading companies in this area.
The event attendees included senior technical advisors from the offices of Senator Bob Casey (Pennsylvania) and Senator Tim Kaine (Virginia), the Senior Scientific and Technical Advisor for Railroad Electronics at the Federal Railroad Administration, the VP of National Programs of L3, Inc., and the President of Tech Eng Solutions, Inc., as well as other senior advisors and staff of these delegations.