Westermo, Eviden, and Blu Wireless have won Deutsche Bahn’s Rail Data Transfer Challenge with a wireless mmWave technology solution for moving large volumes of train data to ground infrastructure.
The consortium demonstrated multi-gigabit train-to-ground data transfer under real railway operating conditions, securing the highest ranking in the DB InfraGO challenge. The competition was organised through DB mindbox, Deutsche Bahn’s startup hub, and attracted 19 international submissions.
The process began with concept submissions before five teams were selected for virtual challenge days with Deutsche Bahn experts. Three teams then progressed to final on-site demonstrations in Minden, Germany, where systems were tested under comparable railway conditions. Westermo and Eviden emerged as winners based on performance and overall system approach.
The challenge was designed around a practical railway problem. Inspection trains can generate up to 10TB of data per day, stored locally on board. That data needs to be transferred to land-based systems during limited stabling windows so that it can be processed, analysed, and used for infrastructure monitoring and maintenance decisions.
The winning system combines multi-gigabit mmWave wireless technology, railway-grade networking capability, and data processing. mmWave communications can support high throughput over short distances, making the technology suitable for transferring large datasets while trains are stationary at depots or defined stabling locations.
Rail infrastructure is becoming more data intensive as operators expand condition monitoring, automated inspection, imaging, track geometry measurement, asset analytics, and predictive maintenance. The limiting factor is no longer only the volume of data collected, but the speed at which that data can be moved, processed, secured, and turned into usable maintenance information.
High-volume operational data is now a common constraint across engineering. Complex test engineering workflows increasingly rely on large MDF4 datasets and improved analysis platforms, while rail inspection adds the further challenge of moving terabytes of infrastructure data from vehicles into engineering systems inside short operating windows.
Traditional wireless transfer methods can struggle when data volumes reach multi-terabyte levels and transfer time is limited. Manual extraction, physical media handling, or slower network links add delay and operational friction. High-throughput train-to-ground transfer can reduce that bottleneck and bring inspection data into analysis systems sooner.
The engineering challenge is not only bandwidth. Railway environments create constraints around ruggedness, alignment, electromagnetic compatibility, safety, installation space, cybersecurity, and maintainability. Equipment must perform reliably around moving vehicles, metallic structures, variable weather, vibration, and operational procedures that leave little room for fragile systems.
mmWave systems also require careful design because high-frequency links are more sensitive to alignment, blockage, range, and environmental conditions than lower-frequency communications. Demonstrating the system under railway operating conditions therefore gives the consortium a stronger basis than a laboratory throughput figure alone.
Faster data transfer could support more frequent inspection, shorter analysis cycles, and more responsive maintenance. Track, overhead line, signalling, tunnel, bridge, and rolling stock data all become more valuable when they can be acted upon quickly. Delayed data can still support trend analysis, but rapid transfer improves the chance of identifying and prioritising emerging faults before they affect service.
The winning team will now have a route into further proof of concept work with Deutsche Bahn. Commercial deployment will depend on how the system integrates into depots, inspection train operations, data platforms, and maintenance workflows. A high-speed link is useful only if the surrounding data chain can ingest, process, secure, and distribute information at comparable speed.
Rail digitalisation is often discussed through signalling, passenger information, and traffic management. The Westermo-led project shows another layer: the physical transfer of inspection data from assets into engineering systems. As railways collect more information from infrastructure, moving that information reliably becomes part of the maintenance architecture.
