Algorithm detects train position even when GPS signal is lost
Televic Rail and Flanders Make have developed a system to accurately pinpoint the position of trains in the absence of GPS signals
Accurate to five metres
GPS positioning is used to pinpoint the location of a train when sufficient satellite signals are available. But when GPS fails, such as if the train enters a tunnel or a valley, “dead reckoning” navigation becomes necessary. This is the process of calculating the current position of a train based on its previous position, speed and acceleration.
Flanders Make and Televic Rail have developed a dead reckoning algorithm able to fuse GPS data with these parameters. The algorithm provides an estimation of the train’s position that is accurate to within five metres, even when the GPS data is missing for as long as two minutes.
Televic Rail is working towards implementing the algorithm on a railway-certified embedded platform. Two initial applications have been proposed: A public address system would be able to accurately locate a train and announce when it is arriving in a station, and a track-fault monitoring system would be able to indicate the location of problems along a train track.
These results have been achieved under the Mechatronics 4.0 project, which is funded by Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Photo: Ingimage
