Asynchronous Resilient Wireless Sensor Network for Train Integrity Monitoring

To increase railway use efficiency, the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) Level 3 requires all trains to constantly and reliably self-monitor and report their integrity and track position without infrastructure support. Timely train separation detection is challenging, especially for long freight trains without electrical power on cars. Data fusion of multiple monitoring techniques is currently investigated, including distributed integrity sensing of all train couplings. We propose a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) topology, communication protocol, application, and sensor nodes prototypes designed for low power timely train integrity reporting in unreliable conditions, like intermittent node operation and network association (e.g., in low environmental energy harvesting conditions) and unreliable radio links. Each train coupling is redundantly monitored by four sensors, which can help to satisfy the Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) SIL 4 requirements and contribute to the reliability of the asynchronous network with low rejoin overhead. A control center on the locomotive controls the WSN and receives the reports, helping the integration in railway or Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Software simulations of the embedded application code virtually unchanged show that the energy-optimized configurations check a 50-car train integrity (about 1 km long) in 3.6 s average with 0.1 s standard deviation and that more than 95 % of the reports are delivered successfully with up to one-third of communications or up to 15 % of the nodes failed. We also report qualitative test results for a 20-node network in different experimental conditions

A Survey on IT-Techniques for a Dynamic Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures

This deliverable is a survey on the IT techniques that are relevant to the three use cases of the project EMILI. It describes the state-of-the-art in four complementary IT areas: Data cleansing, supervisory control and data acquisition, wireless sensor networks and complex event processing. Even though the deliverable’s authors have tried to avoid a too technical language and have tried to explain every concept referred to, the deliverable might seem rather technical to readers so far little familiar with the techniques it describes

Wireless Sensor Networks for Condition Monitoring in the Railway Industry : a Survey

In recent years, the range of sensing technologies has expanded rapidly, whereas sensor devices have become cheaper. This has led to a rapid expansion in condition monitoring of systems, structures, vehicles, and machinery using sensors. Key factors are the recent advances in networking technologies such as wireless communication and mobile adhoc networking coupled with the technology to integrate devices. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be used for monitoring the railway infrastructure such as bridges, rail tracks, track beds, and track equipment along with vehicle health monitoring such as chassis, bogies, wheels, and wagons. Condition monitoring reduces human inspection requirements through automated monitoring, reduces maintenance through detecting faults before they escalate, and improves safety and reliability. This is vital for the development, upgrading, and expansion of railway networks. This paper surveys these wireless sensors network technology for monitoring in the railway industry for analyzing systems, structures, vehicles, and machinery. This paper focuses on practical engineering solutions, principally,which sensor devices are used and what they are used for; and the identification of sensor configurations and network topologies. It identifies their respective motivations and distinguishes their advantages and disadvantages in a comparative review

Towards the Internet of Smart Trains: A Review on Industrial IoT-Connected Railways

[Abstract] Nowadays, the railway industry is in a position where it is able to exploit the opportunities created by the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and enabling communication technologies under the paradigm of Internet of Trains. This review details the evolution of communication technologies since the deployment of GSM-R, describing the main alternatives and how railway requirements, specifications and recommendations have evolved over time. The advantages of the latest generation of broadband communication systems (e.g., LTE, 5G, IEEE 802.11ad) and the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for the railway environment are also explained together with the strategic roadmap to ensure a smooth migration from GSM-R. Furthermore, this survey focuses on providing a holistic approach, identifying scenarios and architectures where railways could leverage better commercial IIoT capabilities. After reviewing the main industrial developments, short and medium-term IIoT-enabled services for smart railways are evaluated. Then, it is analyzed the latest research on predictive maintenance, smart infrastructure, advanced monitoring of assets, video surveillance systems, railway operations, Passenger and Freight Information Systems (PIS/FIS), train control systems, safety assurance, signaling systems, cyber security and energy efficiency. Overall, it can be stated that the aim of this article is to provide a detailed examination of the state-of-the-art of different technologies and services that will revolutionize the railway industry and will allow for confronting today challenges.Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED431C 2016-045Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED341D R2016/012Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED431G/01Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España); TEC2013-47141-C4-1-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación (España); TEC2015-69648-REDCAgencia Estatal de Investigación (España); TEC2016-75067-C4-1-

PluralisMAC: a generic multi-MAC framework for heterogeneous, multiservice wireless networks, applied to smart containers

Developing energy-efficient MAC protocols for lightweight wireless systems has been a challenging task for decades because of the specific requirements of various applications and the varying environments in which wireless systems are deployed. Many MAC protocols for wireless networks have been proposed, often custom-made for a specific application. It is clear that one MAC does not fit all the requirements. So, how should a MAC layer deal with an application that has several modes (each with different requirements) or with the deployment of another application during the lifetime of the system? Especially in a mobile wireless system, like Smart Monitoring of Containers, we cannot know in advance the application state (empty container versus stuffed container). Dynamic switching between different energy-efficient MAC strategies is needed. Our architecture, called PluralisMAC, contains a generic multi-MAC framework and a generic neighbour monitoring and filtering framework. To validate the real-world feasibility of our architecture, we have implemented it in TinyOS and have done experiments on the TMote Sky nodes in the w-iLab.t testbed. Experimental results show that dynamic switching between MAC strategies is possible with minimal receive chain overhead, while meeting the various application requirements (reliability and low-energy consumption)

A Rate Control Model of MPEG-4 Encoder for Video Transmission over Wireless Sensor Network

Recently, multimedia application has a lot of attention in the research community, especially when transmitting video over IEEE 802.15.4 standard. This is due to the capability of providing low complexity with low cost, but still maintaining the quality of video in term of packet received. However, transmitting video over Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) posed a new research challenges with high bandwidth demand and energy constrained of sensor nodes. MPEG-4 video codec is one of the compression techniques that used to decrease the amount of bandwidth required to meet WSN environment. Therefore, video encoding is a useful tool for rate control to control the video bit rate and maintaining the video quality especially in real-time communication applications. Video bit rate is affected by quantization scale, frame rate, and Group of Picture (GOP) size. A rate control model called enhanced Video Motion Classification based (e-ViMoC) model is proposed in this paper to produce the desired bit rate that complies to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, while at the same time preserving the video quality. The analysis has shown that, the video transmission using e-ViMoC rate control achieves enhancement in delivery ratio, energy consumption and video quality (PSNR) when compared to video transmission using uncompressed video

Comparison Between Reactive and Proactive Protocols of Wireless Sensor Networks: Railway Application

Railway is a critical application; hence, all systems that compose the railway infrastructure must meet two conditions: availability and safety. The availability ensures continuous operation of the system; on the other hand, safety is achieved when the device works properly regardless of the environmental or operating conditions. In addition, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are used to perform tasks previously performed manually. However, it is necessary to analyse what protocol is appropriate for the railway industry, since availability and safety are the required attributes. In this work, a recently proposed routing protocol, the Multi-Parent Hierarchical (MPH), has been compared with a well-known protocol, the Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), in order to find the most suitable one for the railway applications. For this purpose, a simulator has been developed, which faithfully reifies the workings of a given protocol, considering a fixed, reconfigurable ad-hoc network given by the number and location of participants, and general network conditions.</p

Recent Advances in Internet of Things Solutions for Early Warning Systems: A Review

none5noNatural disasters cause enormous damage and losses every year, both economic and in terms of human lives. It is essential to develop systems to predict disasters and to generate and disseminate timely warnings. Recently, technologies such as the Internet of Things solutions have been integrated into alert systems to provide an effective method to gather environmental data and produce alerts. This work reviews the literature regarding Internet of Things solutions in the field of Early Warning for different natural disasters: floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides. The aim of the paper is to describe the adopted IoT architectures, define the constraints and the requirements of an Early Warning system, and systematically determine which are the most used solutions in the four use cases examined. This review also highlights the main gaps in literature and provides suggestions to satisfy the requirements for each use case based on the articles and solutions reviewed, particularly stressing the advantages of integrating a Fog/Edge layer in the developed IoT architectures.openEsposito M.; Palma L.; Belli A.; Sabbatini L.; Pierleoni P.Esposito, M.; Palma, L.; Belli, A.; Sabbatini, L.; Pierleoni, P

Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks - OMCO NET

The mini conference “Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks” focuses on advanced methods for search and optimisation applied to wireless communication networks. It is sponsored by Research & Enterprise Fund Southampton Solent University. The conference strives to widen knowledge on advanced search methods capable of optimisation of wireless communications networks. The aim is to provide a forum for exchange of recent knowledge, new ideas and trends in this progressive and challenging area. The conference will popularise new successful approaches on resolving hard tasks such as minimisation of transmit power, cooperative and optimal routing

CoReDac: Collision-Free Command-Response Data Collection

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