International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Volume 118 No. 18 2018, 2185-2194 ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version) url: http://www.ijpam.eu Special Issue ijpam.eu

Railway Signalling System using Zigbee Technology

Chekuri Sravani1, M. Jagannath1,* and K. Adalarasu2 1School of Electronics Engineering, VIT Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India 2School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SASTRA University, Tanjore, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract Railway signalling systems are used to control the traffic of the trains. There are many sensors used in the track or train to control the signals. Now a day’s technology is developing vastly, wired technology is replaced by the wireless technology. In this paper, we proposed a railway signalling system and method to reduce the manpower, power, and cost with the help of wireless technology. ZigBee wireless technology is used because of low cost, low power consumer. It contains a transmitter and receiver which are placed at base station and control units present in train. The consequences of these tests are utilized as rules to deliver a remote flagging framework ready to be set on trackside, enabling hub to-hub and hub to-train correspondence. The proposed railway signalling system decides where to occupy the platform or leave the platform by the trains and the information send by the train to the base station and all these communications is done by the ZigBee wireless technology. Index Terms: Train, Railway System, ZigBee Wireless Technology.

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1. INTRODUCTION As of late the innovation is growing immeasurably extraordinary sorts of sensors are creating step by step with a minimal effort. This has incited a quick improvement in condition checking of systems, structures, vehicles, and mechanical assembly using sensors [1]. With the assistance of these sensors and new advancements we can undoubtedly utilize these sorts of segments and sensors in day by day existence with no trouble. In railroads likewise we can utilize these sorts of innovations to anticipate mischances, to diminish the cost, to lessen labor. This has prompted a quick development in condition checking of frameworks, structures, vehicles and hardware utilizing sensors. Key elements are the current advances in systems administration innovations, for example, remote correspondence and versatile specially appointed systems administration combined with the innovation to incorporate gadgets. Remote correspondence can be utilized for checking the railroad condition observing lessens human investigation and diminishes upkeep through identifying deficiencies before they heighten, and enhances security and unwavering quality [2,3]. This is imperative for the improvement, overhauling, and extension of railroad systems. Condition observing recognizes and distinguishes crumbling in structures and framework before the decay causes a disappointment or forestalls rail operations. In straightforward condition observing, sensors screen the state of a structure or hardware. In the event that the sensor readings achieve a foreordained breaking point or blame condition, then a caution is enacted [2]. In any case, this oversimplified approach may prompt a substantial number of false alerts and missed disappointments. The aim of this work is to reduce the accidents and failures of the component in the tracks and also introducing a wireless technology to the railways.

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2. EXISTING RAILWAY SIGNALLING SYSTEM The railway system [7]is Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC), established in the IEEE 1474 Standard [2]. This system is divided into four fundamental parts shown in Figure 1 they are on-board unit, interlocking system, control center and communication network [4]. In the communication system it is integrated with a system with the antennas or leaky feeder cable for the bi-directional communication between the track equipment and the trains. And this communication will be done at the frequency range of 2.4 GHz.

Figure 1. Architecture of the Communication-Based Train Control CBTC System [13].

3. INFRASTURCTURE OF COMMUNICATION SCHEME In the view of signalling scheme an alternative method is proposed to reduce the power and the cost. In this it contain four basic elements they are: control unit, on board unit, signal nodes and slave nodes [1]. The control unit is the coordinate of the network. It is used to send the information to different devices within it. Slave node is used to send the information to different nodes with in the network area. Signal nodes are used to transmit the data and the operation of the signal lights [6,7].

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The on board unit is placed in the train which gets the information from the control unit. At the point when the train is consistently proceeding onward the track the slave node is utilized to get the association between the control unit and the on board unit. Figure 2 shows the schematic of the basic elements in the signalling scheme.it explains that the control unit is placed at the fixed point with in the coverage area.

Figure 2. Schematic of basic elements in signalling scheme. And this control unit is placed where at least it get the information from one slave node otherwise there is no possibility of transmission of the information. Once the data or message is send it will be re transmitted until it reaches its destination point. All the nodes are communicated back to the control unit. All the signals are controlled by the control unit and the slave node collects the information and send back to the control unit. This is possible due to the multi- hopping network architecture.

4. RAILWAY TRACK CIRCIUT The track circuit is import in the tracks of railways. The track circuit is a simple electric device which gives the information about the trains to the

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control unit [5].

Figure 3. Operation of the railway track circuit [12]. Figure 3 shows the emerging battery is connected to the track circuit, the main function of track circuit is used to calculate the no of wheels of the train if the no of wheels is less it will not allow the train to go. When the train is occupied in the track at first the track circuit count the wheels and allows the train and gives the signal to the signalling system which is connected to the control unit and it gives the signal whether the train have to stop in the platform are go. If the track circuit fails it cannot detect the trains and it may cause the accidents. The failure of the track circuit is caused because of the break of the wire between the track circuit and the battery. And also the failure of the battery can cause the track circuit damage [10].

5. EXPERIMENT SETUP Here we have designed a setup which is low power consumption and the low cost also low failures; in this setup we used the ZigBee series 2. ZigBee IEEE Standard is 802.15.4. It is used for the high level communication ZigBee makes its very own range coordinate with little and low power advanced radios. The field test was conducted in Efftronics Private Limited,

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Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. The frequency range of ZigBee is 2.4GHz (world-wide), 868MHz (Europe), 915MHz (USA and Australia) [11]. It can transmit the date over long separations by going information through a mesh networks to reach from one separation to other. These ZigBee devices are of three kinds they are: coordinator, router and end devices. The coordinator acts as a parent where the network is start, in one network only one coordinator must be there. The router is used to send the data from one point to other, and it allows other devices to join like end point or other routers [11]. The main advantage of the ZigBee is it can easily form the network and can communicate easily, it consume low power and also low cost [9]. Firstly we have set the connection between the ZigBee coordinator and router at the baud rate of 9600. We calculate the throughput which means the transmission of message successfully with give period of time, through put is 93.3kbps. ZigBee module is connected to the Uno, in the ZigBee module UART MAX232 is connected to it and also the LCD also connected to the Arduino Uno which is used to display the information of the train. The Arduino Uno is a and it will convert the information and transmit to the ZigBee. It is used to reduce the manual work and thus instead of signalling manually automating it using ZigBee node to node connection and thus reducing time delay and increasing the efficiency of the station. In this we will be using LCD for display, ZigBee for transmitting and receiving information from station and rail and power supply to run these and a control and an indication switch. The control switch seen in Figure 4 is a push button when on it symbolize the absence of train and the mobility of vehicles can be done. But when the control button is off it symbolizes the arrival or departure of train and the vehicles movement near station is not allowed. And the indication switch is used to know

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the direction of train up the station or down the station that means if the train is arriving or departing from the station.

(a) (b) Figure 4. Experiment setup. (a) Control unit present in train, (b) Base station. The Arduino Uno contains 14 digital pins and 6 analog pins. A microcontroller with analog interface symbolizes the presence of analog to digital converter. And the device works for 12 to 15 VDC and on the device we have 5V, 3.3V and ground pins so the voltage regulator is connected. The digital pins are connected to LCD which has 6 digital pins connected to it and they are rs, e, d4, d5, d6, d7 and connecting them in the Uno. We can access the LCD and for serial communication of ZigBee we use predefined serial commands. And these serial commands can be monitored using serial monitor in IDE which has baud rate setting and cursor setting in it. At the base station shown in Figure 4 we will have the signal stands for the station and trains having the control unit will be having the control button which means when high there should be no mobility of vehicles near the station and when high there can be vehicular movement and the indication switch is responsible for the direction of train either up or down thus the train arrival or departure is seeked. And in this we have four cases where either both the platforms are free and the second case is either of them busy that is platform1 is busy and in case 3 platform

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2 is busy and plat -form 1 is free and in fourth case both platforms are busy.

6. CONCLUSION In this we proposed a method to reduce the manual power and to avoid accidents in the platform. A wireless control technology, ZigBee is used to transmit and receive the data between unit (train) and base station. Throughput also determined at the baud rate of 9600 i.e 93.33kbps. The experiment set up contains both the transmitter and the receiver which is placed in the control unit and the base station. By using this wireless technology we can easily communication without any interruptions. This whole experiment is done at baud rate 9600. For future work we can use different baud rate.

7. REFERENCES [1] Armando Mendz Villalan, Steve Greedy and David W.P. Thomas, “Robustness study of ZigBee networks in an EM environment for railway signalling systems”, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Rail Transportation (2016), pp. 55-66. [2] J. Smith, S. Russel, M. Looi, “Security as a safety issue in rail communications”, Proceedings of the 8th Australian Workshop on Safety Critical Systems and , Vol. 33 (2003), pp. 79-88. [3] G. M. Shafiullah, A.G.-Amoakoh, and P.J. Wolfs, “Survey of wireless communications applications in the railway industry”. AusWireless 2007: Proceedings of the Wireless Broadband and Ultra Wideband Communications 2007 International Conference, IEEE, Piscataway, N. J., pp. 65-70. [4] M. Aguado, E. Jacob, P. Saiz, J.J. Unzilla, M.V. Higuero, J. Matias, “Railway signalling systems and new trends in wireless data communication”, Vehicular Technology Conference (2005), pp. 1333-1336.

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[5] P. J. Wolfs, S. Bleakley, S. T. Senini, P. Thomas, “An autonomous low cost distributed method for observing vehicle track interactions”, Joint Rail Conference (2006), pp. 279-286. [6] L. Zhu, Y. Zhang, B. Ning and H. Jiang, “Train-ground communication in CBTC based on 802.11b design and performance Research”, in International Conference on Communications and Mobile Computing., IEEE Computer Society, Vol. 2 (2009), pp. 368-372. [7] T.Karthigaipriya and D.Srividya,” Road Asset Management System For Madurai CBD”, International Journal of Innovations in Scientific and Engineering Research (IJISER),vol.1(2014),no.12,pp.436-443. [8] P. V. Craven, S. Craven, “Security of ATCS wireless railway communications”, Joint Rail Conference, (2005), pp. 227-238. [9] J. Higuera, E. Kartsakli, J.L. Valenzuela, L. Alonso, A. Laya, R. Martínez, A. Aguilar, “Experimental study of , ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 technologies on board high-speed trains”, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (2012), pp. 12-17. [10] M. Seifert, "Using modern technology to enhance rail security”, Conference on Railway Engineering, (2006), pp. 430-436. [11] S.K Abed, “European rail traffic management system - An overview”, IEEE International Conference on Energy, Power and Control (2010), pp.173-180. [12] Railway Track Circuit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_circuit [13] Communications based Train Control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications-based_train_control

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