Case Study: Deutsche Bahn modernizes railway IoT operations with Eclipse Foundation open source

Deploying IoT on Germany's DB Railway System

Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German railway operator, needed to modernize its aging machine-to-machine communication systems, which relied heavily on costly and hard-to-maintain SMS-based technology. As DB Systel, its internal ICT partner, looked to replace these legacy systems with IoT-based alternatives, it evaluated communication standards and chose MQTT and HTTP, with Eclipse Foundation technologies such as Eclipse Paho supporting MQTT client connectivity.

Eclipse Foundation’s open source IoT stack helped DB deploy connected railway applications across trains and stations, including real-time train location and diagnostics, dynamic passenger information displays, escalator and elevator monitoring, and on-train messaging with Eclipse Mosquitto. The solution improved interoperability and made collaboration easier, while supporting large-scale rollout: about 400 long-distance trains sending location data every 10 seconds, roughly 6,500 station displays handling 25 messages per second, and about 3,000 escalator/elevator devices sending 10 MQTT messages per second.

Deutsche Bahn

Alexander Schmitt

Chief Architect