page_title: Eurobalise
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Eurobalise / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Baliza EBICAB instalada en el Corredor Mediterráneo.
context_page_description: A Eurobalise is a specific variant of a balise being a transponder placed between the rails of a railway. These balises constitute an integral part of the European Train Control System, where they serve as "beacons" giving the exact location of a train as well as transmitting signalling information in a digital telegram to the train.
context_section_description: The direct predecessor of Eurobalises are the balises of the Ebicab train protection system. The Ebicab system was developed in Sweden (and Norway) by LMEricson and SRT. The Ebicab system was developed after a crash in Norway in 1975 (Tretten). Trial runs started in 1979, and in Norway the first line fully equipped with the system was operational in 1983. The adaptation of the Ebicab system in France is the KVB system. It had been developed after a crash in 1985 and it was deployed in the early 1990s on French lines. The name for the beacons: "balise" was however in use in the Ebicab system in the late 1970s.
  About the same time the idea came up to develop a common train protection system for Europe leading to the 91/440/EEC as of 29 July 1991. Since 1993 the organizational framework was in place to publish TSI standards. This allowed for the first drafts of the new technology and since 1996 the elements were tested by six railway operators which had joined the ERTMS user group.
  The Ebicab technology did already use the 27 MHz carrier frequency as well as putting the beacons in the center of the track. With Ebicab a single balise transmission had only 12 bit but it allowed for 2 to 5 balises in a balise group providing 24 to 80 bit of signalling information. Most of the patents on that encoding are held by GEC Alsthom. It was then to ABB to extend the telegram size from 12 bit in EBICAB 700 to 180 bit in EBICAB 900 (after encoding 255 bit) as used in the Mediterranean Corridor in Spain. In that time Ansaldo adopted the balise type for the digital evolution of the Italian SCMT also becoming a second supplier for the balise type to other railways. These balise types were later collectively named KER balises from their usage in KVB, Ebicab and RSDD (Ripetizione Segnali Discontinua Digitale).
  Another source for the technology comes from the Siemens ZUB 100 family where they used coupling coils at the side of the tracks to augment the existing train protection system with additional signalling. The first ZUB 111 beacon did just allow for 21 states (using 2 out of 7 frequencies). The successor ZUB 122 switched to a digital telegram modulated on an 850 kHz carrier. The latter was used first in the ZUB 121 for Switzerland since 1992 and ZUB 123 for Denmark since 1992. The telegram types of these systems are compatible with the ORE A46 specification for the German LZB telegrams (about 83 bits).
  Siemens published a report showing the advantages of the balise technology for railway operations in 1992 and in the fall of 1995 they delivered prototypes of Siemens type S21 Eurobalise. ABB, Alsthom and Ansaldo did also cooperate in the development and the S21 balise along with other Eurobalise prototypes were tested from July to October 1996 at the Velim railway test circuit and the Austrian railways test lab (Forschungs- und Prüfzentrum Arsenal).
  The Eurobalise FFFIS (Form Fit Function Interface Specification) was introduced to the ERMTS range of specifications as SUBSET-036. Its foreword describes the specification to be based on the results of EUROSIG consortium (ACEC Transport, Adtranz Signal, Alcatel SEL, GE C Alsthom Transport, Ansaldo Trasporti, CSEE Transport, SASIB Railway, Siemens, and Westinghouse Signal) that got financial support from the European Commission. The EUROSIG formed after the initial Eurobalise/Euroloop Project 92/94 leading into the actual ERTMS/EUROSIG Project 95/98 supported by the parallel EMSET Project 96/00 (testing the Eurocab specification).
  When the EUROSIG project had ended the ETCS was still not ready for real world application. So 1998 saw the formation of UNISIG (Union of Signalling Industry), including Alstom, Ansaldo, Siemens, Bombardier, Invensys and Thales which were to take over the finalisation of the standard. The first baseline specification has been tested by six railways since 1999 as part of the European Rail Traffic Management System The railway companies defined some extended requirements that were added to ETCS including telegram packet types for RBC-Handover and track profile informat
caption: EBICAB balise in the Mediterranean Corridor
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