Railway monitoring system using optical fiber grating accelerometers

Optimal operation, reduced energy consumption, longer service availability, and high safety level are the major concerns in today's railway transport systems. Smart monitoring systems should address these issues without interrupting railway operability. Many successful works have been carried out to provide railway monitoring functions using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors on rail. Most of them are based on strain measurement due to the train passage. This paper presents a highly sensitive means for railway monitoring based on vibration measurement. FBG accelerometers placed on sleeper have been employed as sensor heads, which significantly facilitated the field sensor installation work compared to the positioning on the foot of the rail. An optimized signal demodulation algorithm has been effectively used to extract from the accelerometer traces both the axle number and the average speed information. Excellent capability of the developed system to obtain both parameters has been demonstrated by the way of field trials carried out on a Belgian railway line, during its normal operation. Easy installation, multi-function diagnosis, good data integrity, and compatibility with fiber optic sensors make the proposed sensor a good candidate for railway monitoring applications.INOGRAMS (Innovations for a Global Rail Management System) project of Wallonia (Belgium) 7171 and TUBITAK (BIDEB-2219-1059B191600612

Europe and the future for WPT COST action IC1301 team

This article presents European-based contributions for wireless power transmission (WPT), related to applications ranging from future Internet of Things (IoT) and fifth-generation (5G) systems to high-power electric vehicle charging. The contributors are all members of a European consortium on WPT, COST Action IC1301. WPT is the driving technology that will enable the next stage in the current consumer electronics revolution, including batteryless sensors, passive RF identification (RFID), passive wireless sensors, the IoT, and machine-to-machine solutions. The article discusses the latest developments in research by some of the members of this group