GNSS/IMU/UWB-Based Train Integrity Monitoring Using Fuzzy Reasoning

Integrity of a train is a significant characteristic parameter towards a railway train control system in order to guarantee the railway operational safety. The decoupling event between a locomotive and a carriage or two adjacent carriages has become a serious threat for the following train operating along the same track. Conventional train integrity monitoring solutions based on state detection with specific sensors, like the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver and tail wind pressure unit, may not perform effectively and safely under constrained or difficult operation environments. This paper presents a Train Integrity Monitoring System (TIMS) architecture with integration of GNSS, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and Ultra-wide Band (UWB) ranging technique. To realize the effective determination of the train integrity state with multiple detection channels, the fuzzy reasoning theory is adopted for decision-making. By using the simulated Head-of-Train (HoT) and End-of-Train (EoT) platforms, both the normal and decoupling scenarios are investigated through experiments. With the practically collected sensor datasets, the different single-sensor-based methods are compared with the presented fuzzy reasoning-based solution. The comparison results illustrate the advanced performance level under the given experimental conditions, which indicate great potentials of the presented solution in novel train control systems.