ETSI FRMCS Plugtests Report now available
Sophia Antipolis, 5 July 2021
ETSI, with the support of the European Commission (EC), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the Critical Communications Association (TCCA) and the Union Internationale des Chemins de fer (UIC), released its Report following the FRMCS (Future Railway Mobile Communication System) Plugtests remote-only event which took place from 14 to 18 June 2021.
100 participants from all over the world executed around 350 test cases in 65 test sessions, interoperability results were reported in the ETSI Test reporting tool with 95% success rate. With the support of the US based FirstNet, observations from the event will be forwarded to 3GPP working groups for potential clarification of standards.
The goal of the FRMCS Plugtests event was to validate the interoperability of a variety of implementations using different test scenarios based on the 3GPP Mission Critical Services framework with a focus on the rail specific features.
The FRMCS Plugtests event tested railways-oriented capabilities like Functional Aliases, Multi-talker, MCData IP Connectivity, User Regrouping etc., defined in 3GPP Release-16. It has also focused on Over-The-Top (OTT) tests via VPN connections from the vendor labs using MCX remote lab.
An online observer programme allowed various stakeholders from all around the world to discuss the progress of FRMCS deployment and the status of standards. In addition, an interoperability demonstration was also organised for the observers, where different vendors demonstrated interoperability by executing the Plugtests test cases.
Read the Plugtests Report here.