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1 - Railway-Signalling-Based-On-Sensor - Networks
1 - Railway-Signalling-Based-On-Sensor - Networks
Sandeep Patalay
Sr. IT Engineer, CMC Ltd
sandeep.patalay@gmail.com
Abstract
Railway Signalling is safety critical domain, where still traditional technology
is in use. There are many reasons for using traditional technology; one of the main
reasons being the proven Safety performance of the older systems (Relay Based). As
the rail traffic is increasing and with higher speed of trains there is an acute need for
modernization of Railway Signalling Technology. Even with the advent of
Microprocessor based technology, the problems have not been solved.
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Contents
1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................3
1.1. ABOUT INDIAN RAILWAYS.......................................................................................................3
1.2. SIGNALLING SYSTEMS.............................................................................................................3
1.3. SIGNALLING CONCEPTS...........................................................................................................4
1.3.1. Route Relay Interlocking...................................................................................................4
1.3.2. Solid State Interlocking (SSI) or Computer Interlocking System (CIS)............................5
2. EXISTING INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS..............................7
2.1. ROUTE RELAY INTERLOCKING (RRI)......................................................................................7
2.2. COMPUTER BASED INTERLOCKING SYSTEM (SSI)..................................................................8
2.2.1. Challenges faced by Computer based Interlocking Systems.............................................9
3. PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE OF SIGNALLING SYSTEMS IN RAILWAYS.................11
3.1. WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS.............................................................................................11
3.1.1. Sensor Node.....................................................................................................................11
3.1.2. Gateway Node.................................................................................................................12
3.1.3. Base Station.....................................................................................................................12
3.1.4. Driving Node...................................................................................................................14
3.2. NETWORK ARCHITECTURE....................................................................................................14
3.2.1. Routing Algorithms..........................................................................................................16
3.2.1.1 Flat routing algorithm.........................................................................................................16
3.2.1.2 TinyOS beaconing..............................................................................................................17
3.2.1.3 Pulse routing algorithm.......................................................................................................17
4. FAILSAFE TECHNIQUES.........................................................................................................19
4.1. FAIL SAFE TECH USED IN THE DESIGN OF CONTROL LAWS (INTERLOCKING LOGIC)...........20
4.1.1. Geographical Method......................................................................................................20
4.1.2. Boolean Equation Method...............................................................................................20
5. CHALLENGES IN USING WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN RAILWAY
SIGNALLING........................................................................................................................................21
6. FUTURE WORK AND CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................23
7. APPENDIX- A..............................................................................................................................24
7.1. Glossary of Terms.................................................................................................................29
List of Figures
FIGURE 1: TYPICAL RELAY CIRCUIT..........................................................................................................5
FIGURE 2: A TYPICAL SOLID STATE INTERLOCKING SYSTEM IN A STATION YARD....................................6
FIGURE 3: TYPICAL RRI INSTALLATION.....................................................................................................8
FIGURE 4: TYPICAL SSI INSTALLATION......................................................................................................9
FIGURE 5: TYPICAL ARCHITECTURE OF A SENSOR NODE........................................................................12
FIGURE 6: TYPICAL ARCHITECTURE OF A BASE STATION........................................................................13
FIGURE 7: TYPICAL ARCHITECTURE OF A DRIVING NODE.......................................................................14
FIGURE 8: FUTURISTIC MODEL USING SENSOR NETWORKS IN RAILWAY SIGNALLING............................15
FIGURE 9: ROUTING TREES......................................................................................................................16
FIGURE 10: FAILSAFE HARDWARE FOR SENSOR NODE............................................................................19
FIGURE 11: TIME REDUNDANCY..............................................................................................................27
FIGURE 12: HARDWARE REDUNDANCY....................................................................................................27
FIGURE 13: HARDWARE DIVERSITY.........................................................................................................27
FIGURE 14: SOFTWARE DIVERSITY...........................................................................................................28
FIGURE 15: DIVERSE SOFTWARE ON REDUNDANT HARDWARE.................................................................28
Figure 16: Diverse software on Diverse Hardware.................................................................................28
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1. Introduction
Harnessing the potential of these vast and widespread assets to meet the growing
traffic needs of developing economy is no easy task and makes Indian Railways a
complex cybernetic system. Over the years, Railways have built up an elaborate and
well established manual information system to help them monitoring their moving
assets. Supported by a dedicated voice communications network, it collects and
transmits information from the remotest corners of the country to control centres, at
the highest level. The size and complexity of their operations, growing traffic and
changing technologies, placed inevitably a heavy burden on this manual information
system. Need for its modernization was therefore felt for sometime.
The are different types of Interlocking Systems available like cabin Interlocking
System (Mechanical Interlocking), Panel Interlocking System (PI), Route Relay
Interlocking System (RRI) and Solid Sate Interlocking System (SSI) also known as
Computer Interlocking System (CIS). The cabin Interlocking system is obsolete and
the Panel interlocking is slowing becoming obsolete. The Route Relay Interlocking
System is the widely used system. In the present age of Information technology, the
relay based technology is slowly being phased out and replaced with SSIs, but there
are operational issues with Computer based interlocking systems.
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The output of the Interlocking Logic is also a relay, which in turn drive the
signals and Point Machines associated with points. RRI till date is the safest system
implemented, because it implements the proven interlocking rules and also since the
Relays used in RRI are inherently failsafe, they (Contacts) drop to safe state due to
gravity even when power supply is not available or in any kind of malfunction.
The relays circuits are build using the station Control Table as the input
document and the interlocking rules as the Logic. The Control table decides the
possible movements of the train inside a station yard and its relationship with other
stations.
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SSIs are required to replace the existing RRI and PI Systems Since the
traditional systems are very expensive and difficult to maintain because of the huge
number of relays and mechanical levers used. SSIs are a better solution to the older
systems since they are costing only ¼ the cost of RRI or PI and the maintenance cost
is negligible and are easy to maintain.
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Here we discuss the existing systems used for railway traffic control and their
system architectures. We also list out the limitations these systems have in the current
scenario
A brief list of issues that explain why RRIs are not suitable in the present age of
Information technology
1. The Relays used to build the logic circuits are bulky and take a lot of space
2. The relay wiring is very huge and it may take years to complete an installation
3. The wiring from the field object such as Signals, Points and tracks to the
Relay Room and entire relay wiring is done using copper cables, which is
expensive and it amounts to 50% of the RRI installation cost
4. The testing of RRI is still an informal process that take months to verify and
validate the installation
5. Any change to the station yard such as adding an additional line requires most
or entire RRI wiring to be changed or replaced, which take years to complete
6. Maintenance of the system is very difficult
Due to the above listed reasons, we conclude that RRI is not acceptable to present day
scenarios where traffic needs are growing continuously and the demand for speed of
trains in continuously going up
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1. The wiring from the field object such as Signals, Points and tracks to the SSI
Rack is still done using Copper cables which amounts to huge costs
2. The hardware reliability and availability factor is low compared to the system
availability given by RRI
3. The fail safe mechanisms employed in processor based equipment is not
standard and often get untested during V&V activities
4. Lack of formal methods in developing the control algorithms (Interlocking
Logic)
5. Lack of domain Knowledge in Signalling and Traditional Route Relay
Interlocking Systems, This creates a technological gap between the software
programmers and the Domain consultants. This leads to Errors in software,
which might lead to unsafe failures of the system
6. Extending the working scope of the Interlocking systems for monitoring and
other non-Interlocking functions, which leads to degraded performance of the
system
7. Employing Non-Formal Interlocking principles instead of traditional RRI
Principles leads to software complexity. For Ex: The Geographical method
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needs every system that is installed for new Yard needs validation, which is
not practicable.
8. Since the software and hardware is so complex, complete test of the system is
not possible and most of the faults are revealed at the field Installation stage or
during normal working of the system in field.
9. The software is to be changed for every yard, the software structure should be
in a generic form, but we seldom see a generic form and at this stage errors
creep in.
10. The lack of standardization in the railway working principles and the core
Interlocking principles, the software developers are forced to do changes in the
software for every yard in Different railway zones.
11. Increase in the complexity of the software leads to difficulty in testing, since
most of the Interlocking systems are sequential machines they are error prone
and are very difficult to test.
12. With Increasing speed of trains, there needs to be a direct communication with
the on board computer of the train (Engine), so that there is less human
involvement and thus less human errors. But Interlocking systems are mostly
not capable of sending commands to the on board computer of the train
(Engine)
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As Discussed in the above chapter, the existing systems used for signalling in
railways have limitations in terms of Operations and Technology. These systems have
not used the latest advances in the field of Information Technology. There is need to
upgrade the existing Railway Signalling Infrastructure and addition of new
technologies like fail safe wireless communications which shall combine both the
ground based signalling (Interlocking Systems) and the Locomotives (On Board
Computers of the train), so that the operation speed of the trains can be increased and
thus leading to safe systems with very low accident probability, better utilization of
the track and increased profits to railways. In this chapter we shall propose the
futuristic model of signalling in railways using the most recent advance in the
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). We shall also propose a formal approach to be
taken in making Control Algorithms for safe movement of trains
As per the above definition of a sensor node, sensor node can be used in
railway signalling scenario to detect the presence of train, serving the purpose of track
circuits, to detect the aspect of the signal and its health and detect the position of
points and alsodetect the presence of vehicles at level crossing gates etc. When the
sensors detect the event being monitored (Presence of train, Change of aspect in a
signal, Movement in a point, Movement near a Level Crossing gate etc), the event
needs to be reported to one of the base stations, which can take appropriate action.
Depending on the exact application, different objective functions will require different
data-propagation strategies, depending on things such as need for real-time response,
redundancy of the data (which can be tackled via data aggregation techniques), need
for security, etc.
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Apart form the above discussed points, a sensor node can also be installed in
on board systems like train engine to monitor the different aspects like speed, brake
pressure etc. so that these can be used by the ground based equipment (Interlocking
Systems) to process the data and take appropriate action in case of abnormal
conditions.
Sensor nodes communicate with each other by wireless means, using the IEEE
802.11b wireless technology. The deployed network has typical inter-nodal distances
of 400m, and the furthest reliable communications range we have achieved in the field
is about 600m, therefore nodes at the edges of the network must use nodes between
themselves and the gateway as data relays when communicating with the gateway. To
fulfill this requirement, the nodes form an ad hoc network, where each node aims to
form as many communications links to other nodes in the network, where possible.
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an external data logger as in the case of traditional interlocking systems. Since the
Base station is connected to Internet, any authorized person can monitor the station
yard sitting in a remote location.
All of the requisite sensors, signalling, and processing devices are derived
from proven failsafe technologies, as are the accompanying software methodologies.
Sensor nodes, some with built-in intelligence, play an important role in the
architecture of autonomic train separation. Furthermore, there are daunting safety
requirements that characterize railroading applications. Railway vehicles with their
traditional wiring harnesses suffer limitations in supporting vital control functions.
Central
Processing Unit
Communication
Unit for Gateway Gateway
Nodes Node
Operator’s Console
unit
Communication Interne
Unit for Internet t
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Transceiver
Card)
Microcontroller
External
Memory
Availability of data is the most critical part of the Railway Signalling system.
Therefore a reliable architecture of Sensor Network shall be used. Mesh networking
is a way to route data between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and
reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by “hopping” from node to node until
the destination is reached. A mesh network whose nodes are all connected to each
other is a fully connected network. Mesh networks differ from other networks in that
the component parts can all connect to each other via multiple hops, and they
generally are not mobile. Mesh networks can be seen as one type of ad hoc network.
Mesh networks are self-healing: the network can still operate even when a node
breaks down or a connection goes bad. As a result, a very reliable network is formed.
This concept is applicable to wireless networks, wired networks, and software
interaction.
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the additional radios providing specific functions- such as client access, backhaul
service or scanning radios for high speed handover in mobility applications. The mesh
node design also became more modular - one box could support multiple radio cards -
each operating at a different frequency. As a result, a whole new set of applications
are being enabled by third generation mesh networking technology. These include real
time video surveillance, border security or voice communication inside underground
mines.
Sensor Node
Train Engine Sensor Node Sensor Node Sensor Node
Driving Node
S1 S2
1T 2T
P1 S4
3T
S3
Output Channels
Sensor Node Sensor Node
Driving Node
Gateway
Node
Base
Station
In Figure 8, it can be seen that how wireless sensor networks are used to
perform railways signalling. The Sensor nodes are used to detect the presence of train,
aspect of the signals, Position of points, speed of the train etc. The sensor network
normally constitutes a Wireless ad-hoc network, meaning that it each sensor supports
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a multi-hop routing algorithm (several nodes may forward data packets to the base
station).
The most common way of routing in a sensor networks is routing trees (multi
hop routing). A routing tree is a collection of sensor nodes with the base station as the
root of the tree. Sensor ‘A’ is the parent for sensors ‘B’ and ‘C’. Sensor nodes
transmit all there results to there parent nodes only. It is the responsibility of the
parent node for forwarding them to the base station. A child can keep track of several
parent nodes, and depending on the power levels or the quality of the communication
links a child node can change its parent node.
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Routing structures such as routing trees is well suited when there are only a
few number of nodes in the network. A data gathering schedule is a way the data
packets are collected from all the sensors and routed to the base station with
maximum lifetime. The main assumption of this algorithm is that the location of the
sensors, base station and energy values of the sensor nodes are known priori. In this
model the lifetime of the system is intrinsically connected to the data gathering
schedule. During each round a sensor will collect its own, neighbor’s data and
possibly aggregate it and send it to the base station.
Each network node periodically reads its sensor data and transmits the data
packet to its parent in the spanning tree. The parent node in turn forwards the packet
to its parent and soon. This process is repeated until the data finally reaches the base
station. The attractive feature of TinyOS beaconing is its simplicity–nodes do not
have to maintain large routing tables or other complicated data structures. Each node
needs to remember only its parent node in the path to the base station. By combining
the beaconing with a MAC layer scheduling scheme such as TDMA, the nodes can
conserve power by keeping their radio off most of the time. In spite of its attractive
features, the beaconing protocol suffers from one main disadvantage: it is not resilient
to node failures. If a parent node fails, then its entire subtree is cut off from the base
station during the current epoch. Moreover, the protocol results in uneven power
consumption across network nodes. The nodes nearer to the base station consume a
lot of power in forwarding packets from all the nodes in their subtree, whereas the leaf
nodes in the spanning tree do not have to perform any forwarding at all and consume
the least power.
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The Pulse protocol is similar to the beaconing protocol if the pulse source is
considered to be the base station. Thus it has similar merits and demerits as the
beaconing protocol. One area of improvement in the Pulse protocol is to provide a
path deactivation feature. This feature would allow nodes to deactivate paths and
conserve energy even if the intervals between wake-up periods are arbitrarily long.
This would of course trade off the fast path activation for power efficiency.
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4. Failsafe Techniques
Railway Signalling is a safety critical domain and all the equipment used here
shall be Fail Safe. The Existing failsafe techniques used in the design of hardware is
listed in Table 1. The table gives the advantages and disadvantages of each type of
technique. In this section we propose a new safety technique to be used in the design
of hardware applicable for Sensor node, Driver Node and Base station.
Processor 1
Software 1
Software Voter
Sensor
Inputs
Software 2
System
Identical Hardware V
Outputs
O
T
E
R
Processor 2
Software 1
Software Voter
Sensor
Inputs
Software 2
Identical Hardware
Supervisor and
diagnostic Module
In the above figure (Figure 10), two processors are used to process the inputs
from the sensors, the two processors are of the same configuration, but have different
softwares implemented on each one. The two softwares are written in such a manner
that both use different algorithms to process the data. The Software Voter takes the
output generated by two softwares and compares it. The final level of checking is
done by Hardware Comparator called Voter to compare the results given by two
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processing units. If the results are matching the data is transmitted to the base station
other wise appropriate action is taken to make the system Fail Safe. Above all this the
Supervisor and the diagnostic module monitors the performance of the two processing
units, such as Voltage, Error checking Etc. The same architecture can be used in the
design of a Base Station. The above architecture is unique since there are two voters
ensuring safety i.e. First level checking is done by a Software Voter and the final level
checking is done by a Hardware Voter. By adopting the above described architecture,
both failsafe operation and high reliability is ensured.
4.1. Fail Safe Tech used in the design of Control Laws (Interlocking Logic)
As Discussed in earlier sections the Railway Signalling Control Laws or
Interlocking Rules form the basis for Safe movement of trains. There are different
methods by which these Interlocking rules can be implemented in software. Here we
discuss the existing methods for design of Interlocking Rules in Software.
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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.
2. 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
3. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
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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.
10. Design and development of failsafe, fault tolerant and energy saving network
routing algorithms is a complex design
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References
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7. Appendix- A
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Processor Reading at
Time 1
System
Inputs Outputs
Processor Reading at
Time 2
Processor 1
Processor 1 Outputs
Inputs Identical Software
and Hardware System
V Outputs
O
T
E
R
Processor n
Processor n Outputs
Inputs Identical Software
and Hardware
Processor 1
Processor 1 Outputs
Inputs Hardware 1
Identical Software
System
V Outputs
O
T
E
R
Processor n
Processor n Outputs
Inputs Hardware n
Identical Software
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System
Inputs Software 1 Outputs
Software 2
Processor 1
Processor 1 Outputs
Inputs Identical Hardware
Software 1
System
V Outputs
O
T
E
R
Processor n
Processor n Outputs
Inputs Identical Hardware
Software n
Processor 1
Processor 1 Outputs
Inputs Hardware 1 System
Software 1 Outputs
V
O
T
E
R
Processor n
Processor n Outputs
Inputs Hardware n
Software n
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Interlocking Logic: A term used for the logical relationships between physical
entities in the railway yard such as points, signals, track circuits, and so on. In SSI,
this is programmed in the Software; in relay-based interlocking this is hardwired into
the relay circuitry, and in ground-frame interlocking it is manifest in the mechanical
linkages between physical components.
Panel Interlocking System: A system similar to RRI, but multiple commands are
needed to set and Lock a route for safe movement of trains
Solid State Interlocking System (SSI): An Interlocking System When built using
Electronics replacing traditional Mechanical Levers and Electro mechanical relays is
called as Solid State Interlocking System.
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Wayside Signalling: Ground Based Interlocking Systems used to drive the objects
located in the station yard
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