Development and Testing of a UWB-Based Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Ranging System for Self-Propelled Rail Vehicles

The vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) distance ranging system is a critical component of transportation automation, including the railroad industry. Although the mainline rail traffic is strictly regulated by sophisticated train control and dispatching systems, self-propelled rail vehicles, such as maintenance-of-way equipment and light rail vehicles, still rely on the safety discretion of human operators. To support both safety protection and autonomous operations for these vehicles, a fine-grained V2V ranging system is needed. This paper presents our design of a decentralized, high-resolution, short distance V2V ranging system based on ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) technology, implemented by commercial UWB sensors and customized algorithms. A field-testing case study has been conducted to validate the system performance on full-sized self-propelled rail vehicles. The test results quantified the concerned performance parameters of UWB technology for the chosen use case and proved both the operational concepts and the functional design in this study. Our methodology in algorithm design, field-testing, and analytical data metrics should provide implications for applying UWB to other evolving use cases of intelligent rail transportation. At the end of this paper, we evaluate the system capability using ROS simulation and conclude the lessons learned from the system design.