  In an increasingly demanding marketplace that will put great strain on
railway services, research on broadband wireless communication must continue to
strive for improvement. Based on the mature narrowband GSM technology, Global
System for Mobile Communications-Railways (GSM-R) has been deployed both for
operational and voice communications. Although GSM-R fulfills the requirements
of current railway services, it imposes limited capacity and high costs that
restrict enhancements of operational efficiency, passenger security and
transport quality. 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) is expected to be the natural
successor of GSM-R not only for its technical advantages and increasing
performance, but also due to the current evolution of general-purpose
communication systems. This paper examines the key features of LTE as well as
its technical ability to support both the migration of current railway services
and the provisioning of future ones.
