Sunday, July 19, 2009

Need of Electronic Interlocking System (EIS) for Indian Railways

Indian Railway is in acute need of Electronic Interlocking System for many reasons. The design and the verification process of these signalling systems needs to be inline with the (European Standards) CENELEC standards, which over the time have proven their usefulness in dealing with vital equipment. Apart from all these, the Indian railway has its own needs, which are quite different from other countries.  There has to be indigenous solution to these problems. The below points try to describe the attributes of an indigenous developed EIS

 

  1. To improve the safety standards and increase the revenue by increased line speeds.
  2. To invest less in maintenance of signalling infrastructure and thereby increase the profits.
  3. To decrease the installation and commissioning time compared to RRI.
  4. To give the flexibility in changing the software, whenever there is change in the yard layout.
  5. To give flexibility of centralized control from operations control centre , instead of localized control panels
  6. To decrease the burden on operators and maintenance staff by giving warnings about the signalling equipment due for replacement.
  7. To give more flexibility for the maintainer to sit at his desk and monitor the yard.
  8. To eventually move from localized operations to Computer aided dispatch systems (CAD)
  9. To support a supervisory control centre, to look at movement of trains.
  10. To support coded track circuits in future for ATP operations in locomotive.
  11. To eliminate the use of separate data and event loggers.
  12. To support the interface to web browsers to supervisory activities.
  13. To eventually support CAB signalling to communicate with trains.
  14. To support delivery of automated messages to control centers in case of device malfunctions.

 

 

Saturday, May 16, 2009

What is ERTMS - Introduction

The European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a major industrial project developed by six UNIFE members – Alstom Transport, Ansaldo STS, Bombardier Transportation, Invensys Rail Group, Siemens Mobility and Thales – in close cooperation with the European Union, railway stakeholders and the GSM-R industry.

ERTMS has two basic components:

  • ETCS, the European Train Control System, is an automatic train protection system (ATP) to replace the existing national ATP-systems;
  • GSM-R, a radio system for providing voicGSM-R, a radio system for providing voice and data communication between the track and the train, based on standard GSM using frequencies specifically reserved for rail application with certain specific and advanced functions.

ERTMS aims at replacing the different national train control and command systems in Europe. The deployment of ERTMS will enable the creation of a seamless European railway system and increase European railway's competitiveness.

Why does Europe need ERTMS?

Currently there are more than 20 train control systems across the European Union. Each train used by a national rail company has to be equipped with at least one system but sometimes more, just to be able to run safely within that one country.

Each system is stand-alone and non-interoperable, and therefore requires extensive integration, engineering effort, raising total delivery costs for cross-border traffic. This restricts competition and hampers the competitiveness of the European rail sector vis-à-vis road transport by creating technical barriers to international journeys. For instance, the Thalys train sets running between Paris-Brussels-Cologne and Amsterdam have to be equipped with 7 different types of train control systems, which brings considerable costs.

A unique train control system for Europe and beyond

As a unique European train control system, ERTMS is designed to gradually replace the existing incompatible systems throughout Europe. This will bring considerable benefits to the railway sector as it will boost international freight and passenger transport.

In addition, ERTMS is arguably the most performant train control system in the world and brings significant advantages in terms of maintenance costs savings, safety, reliability, punctuality and traffic capacity. This explains why ERTMS is increasingly successful outside Europe, and is becoming the train control system of choice for countries such as China, India, Taiwan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

By making the rail sector more competitive, ERTMS helps to level the playing field with road transport and ultimately provides significant environmental gains.

 

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Bombardier Unveils First Contactless Tram

In a bid to improve energy use and create a more aesthetically pleasing railway, Bombardier has introduced its first completely contactless and catenary-free operating tram. The new train, which uses a contactless power supply and no overhead power lines, incorporates Bombardier's PRIMOVE inductive power transfer technology as well as the integrated MITRAC Energy Saver, which provides cost reductions by recharging energy. Director of advanced technology development at Bombardier, Dr Carsten Struve, said that unique technology used in the tram would provide energy savings and eradicate ugly overhead power lines. "The catenary-free operation offers an entirely new prospect, particularly for trams operating in historic city centres where impressive cityscapes can now exist unencumbered by visual pollution from overhead lines," Struve said. "Combined with the new Bombardier MITRAC Energy Saver technology, the PRIMOVE system can also save additional energy." The PRIMOVE technology system uses principles found in transformer technology with electric power components hidden under the vehicle and beneath the tracks to produce energy for the tram's operation. This makes the system easier to install, eliminates the effect of weather conditions, reduces wear on component parts, and allows the tram to operate with lower noise levels and fewer emissions. The vehicle is equipped with pick-up coils underneath the vehicle, which are connected to the tram's traction system through a cable. The vehicle is only energised when the connected ground segments are fully covered by the vehicle, ensuring safe operation in areas such as pedestrian zones.  The MITRAC energy saver uses a pair of innovative capacitors, which store the energy released each time the vehicle brakes and reuse it during acceleration or operation. The system, which attaches to the tram's roof, been proven to save up to 30% of energy, reducing emissions as well as costs. The PRIMOVE technology system is part of the BOMBARDIER ECO4 portfolio of technologies launched by the company last year.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Challenges in using Wireless Sensor Networks in Railway Signalling

The use of Wireless Sensor Networks in a safety critical Domain like Railways signalling poses challenges in implementation and Operation. Some of the issues and challenges are discussed in this chapter.

 

  1. Sensor network communications must prevent disclosure and undetected modification of exchanged messages. Due to the fact that individual sensor nodes are anonymous and that communication among sensors is via wireless links, sensor networks are highly vulnerable to security attacks.

 

  1. The gateway nodes are prone to failures just like any sensor node, and they consume significantly more energy since they transmit over longer distances compared with sensor-to-sensor links. Failure of a Gateway node results to catastrophic results because, there not information regarding the yard status to the base station

 

  1. Sensor nodes have limited computing power and memory sizes. This restricts the amount of intermediate result a node can hold, also the type of data processing algorithm on a Sensor node.

 

  1. Signals detected at physical sensors might have errors. Malfunction sensors might repeatedly generate false signals, also there could be bias caused by the placement of the sensor.

 

  1. Sensor Nodes, Driver Node and Gate Way node have to work in High EMI Environment. Since sensor networks can be deployed in different situations, wireless medium can be greatly affected by noisy environments, and thus the signal attenuates in regard to the noise. Note that an adversary can intentionally interfere and cause enough noise to affect the communication. It is vital to ensure that communication is on time to respond to emergencies.

 

  1. Wireless sensor networks at times may add delay in sending data to the base station due to the routing algorithms, etc, but Railway Signalling is very time critical job, any delay in receiving the data leads to Catastrophic results.

 

  1. If a sensor node fails due to a technical problem or consumption of its battery, the rest of the network must continue its operation without a problem. Researchers must design adaptable protocols so that new links are established in case of node failure or link congestion. Furthermore, appropriate mechanisms should be designed to update topology information immediately after the environment changes so as to minimize unnecessary power consumption. 

 

  1. The network should be scalable and flexible to the enlargement of the network's size. The communication protocols must be designed in such a way that deploying more nodes in the network does not affect routing and clustering. Rather, the protocols must be adapted to the new topology and behave as expected. In other words, the network must preserve its stability. Furthermore, introducing more nodes into the network means that additional communication messages will be exchanged, so that these nodes are integrated into the existing network. This must be done in a way that a minimum number of messages need to be exchanged among the sensor nodes, and thus battery is not wasted unreasonably.

 

  1. As in Wireless Sensor Networks Both Ground based signalling (Way Side Signalling) and On-Board Signalling (Cab Signalling) get merged, so there is the complexity of linking the ground based control laws to the inputs received from the On-Board Sensors in the train

 

  1. Design and development of failsafe, fault tolerant and energy saving  network routing algorithms is a complex design