Railway Systems

EN 50128 & EN 50657

High-integrity systems developed within the railway industry need to demonstrate compliance with the CENELEC standards EN 50128 or/and EN 50657. The European standard EN 50128/A2:2020 specifies procedures and technical requirements for the development of programmable electronic systems for use in railway control and protection applications such as in communication, signaling and processing systems. EN 50657 was published in 2017, and became ever since the applicable norm for software on-board rolling stock and rail vehicles.

Both EN 50128/A2:2020 and EN 50657:2017 classify functions in railway safety integrity levels (SIL) from 1 to 4 (i.e., from least to most stringent), in addition to a Basic Integrity (BI) level (i.e., equivalent to SIL 0 in EN 50128:2011). Train manufacturers and suppliers are adapting their software development processes to EN 50128 and EN 50657.

Both standards mandate tool classification and tool qualification for offline software tools used throughout software development. Embedded Coder®,  MATLAB & Simulink verification tools and Polyspace code verification tools are qualified and certified with TÜV SÜD assessments according to EN 50128 and EN 50657, covering SIL 1 to SIL 4 applications. The qualifications are based on an application-specific verification workflow. The workflow documentation, TÜV SÜD certificates, and additional tools and artifacts for both EN 50128/A2:2020 and EN 50657:2017 are provided in the IEC Certification Kit.

Key products for developing EN 50128 and EN 50657 applications include: