Electro-motive Diesel, Inc.

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Michael Patrick Deitz

Wayne Allen Rudolph

Dale Alexander Brown

Lawrence Stanley Przybylski

James Fredrick Wiemeyer

Ramachandran Ramjee

Thomas F La Porta

Richard Wayne Buskens

Kazutaka Murakami

Yow-Jian Lin

James Frederick Wiemeyer

The present disclosure is directed to a distributed control system for a locomotive. The distributed system may include a network and a plurality of electronic modules spatially distributed within the locomotive and communicatively coupled to the network in a standardized scalable architecture. A first electronic module of the plurality of electronic modules includes a first configurable controller and a programmable controller, and a second electronic module of the plurality of electronic modules includes a second configurable controller and does not include a programmable controller.

Two-tiered hierarchically distributed locomotive control system

The present disclosure is directed to a distributed control system for a locomotive. The distributed system may include a network and a plurality of electronic modules distributed within a locomotive. Each of the electronic modules is communicatively coupled to the network in a standardized scalable architecture. Each of the electronic modules may include at least a configurable controller that is reconfigurable to implement at least one control function associated with distributed control of the locomotive.

Distributed control system for a locomotive

The present disclosure is directed to a distributed control system for a locomotive. The distributed system may include a network, a plurality of electronic modules and a plurality of control elements distributed within the locomotive. Each of the electronic modules is communicatively coupled to the network in a standardized scalable architecture. Each of the electronic modules may be programmatically reconfigurable to implement distributed control of the locomotive. A first electronic module and a second electronic module of the plurality of electronic modules may be communicatively connected to one of the plurality of control elements via separate communication paths. The first electronic module may be configured to control the control element, and the second electronic module may be configured to control the control element when the first electronic module enters into a failure condition.

Back-up and redundancy of modules in locomotive distributed control systems

The present disclosure is directed to a distributed control system for a locomotive. The distributed system may include a network and a plurality of electronic modules distributed within a locomotive. The plurality of electronic modules are communicatively coupled to the network in a standardized scalable architecture and implementing distributed control of the locomotive. A first electronic module of the plurality of electronic modules may include a first configurable controller and a memory that stores a configuration file received via the network. The first configurable controller may be reconfigurable based on the configuration file stored in the memory.

Remote update in locomotive distributed control systems

A &ldquo;cluster mobile switching center&rdquo; (cMSC) is arranged to perform the switching and control functions of a conventional mobile switching center (MSC), including, if desired, the additional functions of a conventional visitor location register (VLR). The cMSC is implemented on distributed processors using modular software. Advantageously, a specific instance of middleware, known as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), is used as the communications middleware. Functionally, the cMSC is arranged to have two classes of servers: (1) Interworking managers (IMs) that act as gateways and provide interfaces to external network elements, and (2) core servers that perform call processing (registration, location updates, incoming and outgoing call processing) functions and communicate with each other using CORBA. IMs terminate standard protocols with the external elements and use CORBA to communicate with the core servers. Software objects are defined to perform specific tasks, manage particular resources, and interact to provide end-to-end services.

Growing community of inventors

Naperville, IL, United States of America

Michael Patrick Deitz