WANG Kaifeng, ZHANG Qi, LIU Chang, DU Yazhen, CHEN Ningning, GAO Ying
Railway wireless data communications have problems with insufficient bandwidth and poor reliability. This paper describes a railway software-defined wireless communication network (RailSDN) which separates the control plane from the data plane, enables heterogeneous network interoperability among operators, provides user logical isolation using virtualization, and provides transparent data transmission for users. A network resource scheduling model is developed based on a Markov decision process which takes into account various factors such as the infrastructure network status and the user requirements. The system searches for the optimal link allocation with the optimization goal being to satisfy user demand and dynamically adapts to the user requirements for the network resources. Tests show that this railway wireless communication network is scalable, enables flexible customization of user demand, and improves the network resources utilization efficiency.