Railway Interchange 2017 Buzz

Maintenance Technical Presentation: Utilizing Wireless Sensors to Provide Condition Based Monitoring of Railway Assets (Room Sagamore Ballroom 3-5)

20 Sep 17
9:15 AM - 9:45 AM

Tracks: AREMA Full Program, AREMA Full Schedule, AREMA Technical Sessions- Maintenance

Speaker(s): Roberto Bueno Nigro, Business Development Director, Ericsson

Large railways own tens of thousands of assets which require frequent health monitoring. These assets can be either train-borne or along the wayside. Should a point machine, track circuit fail it could result in a signaling system failure leading to collision or derailment. A passenger train door motor failure could lead to the removal of the entire trainset from revenue service leading to delays. Railways invest significant effort to ensure that these assets are in good health by performing frequent tests in the field or the depot. Testing of trackside assets is both expensive in travel costs to reach remote equipment and dangerous as the trackside are housing the equipment may have running trains. Wired track circuit sensors run the risk of interfering with the signaling equipment due to electrical leakage between the sensor network and the signaling network. Therefore, wired sensors in a signaling environment require rigorous safety certification for each installation. However, a battery powered track circuit current sensor or a wireless point machine sensor do not require this per installation certification. With 5G narrow-band IOT technology these railway asset sensors can be located anywhere within cellular range. In areas of weak cellular coverage a LoRa based wireless solution may be used, with a data logger aggregating the measurement communications onto a backhaul network every 8 km. This paper discusses the use of battery powered wireless railway sensors. The sensors are used to measure the current of track motors and point machine as well as rail temperature. The paper also discusses an implementation of this technology in the Lithuanian railway network and future railway asset sensor development.