A Review of the Application of Optical Communication in High-Speed Railway Systems

This paper mainly introduces the applications of optical communication technology in high-speed railway systems. It generally presents and analyzes the evolution of basic technologies from the early plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) to dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) and the optical transport network (OTN), the carriage of core high-speed railway services supported by optical communication, and current frontier innovations related to high-speed railway systems. Finally, it discusses the current shortcomings of this technology in adapting to external factors and the future technical direction and application prospects of deep integration between optical communication and the fifth-generation railway mobile communication system (5G-R). The analysis shows that optical communication is the core transmission foundation supporting the construction of intelligent high-speed railways and has very important application value and development potential in high-speed railway systems.