Citation

Broquetas A, Comerón A, Gelonch A, Fuertes JM, Castro JA, Felip D, López MA, Pulido JA. Sensors (Basel) 2012; 12(12): 16228-16249.

Affiliation

Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord UPC, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. broquetas@tsc.upc.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/s121216228

PMID

23443376

Abstract

The paper presents a two-step technique for real-time track detection in single-track railway sidings using low-cost MEMS gyroscopes. The objective is to reliably know the path the train has taken in a switch, diverted or main road, immediately after the train head leaves the switch. The signal delivered by the gyroscope is first processed by an adaptive low-pass filter that rejects noise and converts the temporal turn rate data in degree/second units into spatial turn rate data in degree/meter. The conversion is based on the travelled distance taken from odometer data. The filter is implemented to achieve a speed-dependent cut-off frequency to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. Although direct comparison of the filtered turn rate signal with a predetermined threshold is possible, the paper shows that better detection performance can be achieved by processing the turn rate signal with a filter matched to the rail switch curvature parameters. Implementation aspects of the track detector have been optimized for real-time operation. The detector has been tested with both simulated data and real data acquired in railway campaigns.

Language: en