Active testing of railway traffic control systems

Abstract: The article addresses the issue of active testing of computer-based railway traffic control systems using the TTCN-3 language. Active error detection during system operation can be one of the methods leading to the assurance of functional safety by the systems. 1. INTRODUCTION Modern railway traffic control (RTC) systems widely use network technologies to create distributed structures. In such a case, the issue of system testing takes on new significance.For RTC systems, there are a number of requirements that must be met to ensure the required level of safety integrity [7, 8]. System testing is mainly understood here in the context of:
• validation, i.e., testing the system’s compliance with user expectations, • verification, i.e., checking the system’s compliance with the specification.
It can be considered that such activities mainly lead to error prevention, i.e., eliminating the causes of their occurrence even before the system is deployed. We then speak of so-called passive testing, which does not provide control of the system’s operation during its exploitation. In the case of complex systems with a distributed structure, an additional undertaking should be the implementation of active testing, leading to error detection during system usage. (…)

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