Integrated navigation system for rail vehicles

Railway transportation has been used more than 200 years and it has been improved continuosly. Since 1800s, rail systems have become one of the most preferred transportation types in passenger and freight transportation. In order to meet the increasing need, railway traffic management systems have become more important. For this reason, Automatic Train Protection (ATP) and Automatic Train Operation (ATO) systems have become very important. Automatic Train Protection and Automatic Train Operation systems make rail transport traffic management safer and more efficient. For the efficient operation of these systems, the position and speed of the rail vehicles must be calculated reliably and continuously. This study investigates the navigation algorithm for reliable speed and position determination in rail transport vehicles. The speed and position calculation systems used in conventional systems were examined and the deficiencies of these calculation systems were analyzed. For the creation of the algorithm, the sensors used in the velocity and position calculation were modeled in the simulation environment and the speed and position information were obtained by the data obtained from multiple sensors with the help of sensor fusion technique. When modeling the sensors, errors due to vehicle dynamics, condition of rail and environmental conditions, sensor bias errors and noise were evaluated. Reference information points on the rail (balise) were used to reset the accumulated errors. The results of fusion and the results of the individual sensors were compared and observed in the simulation environment where the fusion results were more reliable. Keywords: Train Positioning, Sensor Fusion, Odometer, Navigation Sensors, Automatic Train Operation (ATO), Automatic Train Protection (ATP), Integrated Navigation