Keywords: CBTC system, moving block signaling, static block signaling, mobile agents, Petri nets.

The current static block signalling (SBS) infrastructure used for mixed traffic scenario in the Indian Railways (IR) is a major performance bottleneck in terms of the existing track capacity utilization and other traffic related safety aspects. Communication based train control (CBTC) systems with moving block signalling (MBS), used in many developed countries, have obtained remarkable benefits in terms of capacity enhancement and safe train operation. Most countries, where CBTC is in use have homogenous train traffic, thus simplifying its operational issues. Whereas, the use of CBTC in mixed traffic operation with MBS is challenging. In this paper, first, our main emphasis is to study extensively the operational structure of the IR and present a methodology for engineering systems of software agents based software framework for the IR. While the principal goal of the system is to ensure safe train movement, it involves several sub-goals. Second, as a case we considered the sub-goal moving authority given to evaluate the behavioural aspects of a part of our proposed framework using a coloured Petri net (CPN). A few fault conditions have also been simulated to test our CPN based model. Preliminary results obtained through simulation show the efficacy of the mobile agent based CBTC framework for IR to achieve the earlier mentioned global goal.

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