A novel frequency shifted active radar for local position measurement of rail borne vehicles for industrial conditions

Abstract

This paper presents active radar-based position measurement system for rail borne vehicles. Laser systems are more accurate but fail to perform well in the dusty environment and also due to erroneous alignment. Conventional radar systems are rugged but prone to false echoes from various surrounding metallic structures which are always present in the industrial site. This affects radar-based system adversely and the range gets limited to 50 m. To overcome this drawback, an active radar-based system with frequency shift has been designed and developed which is suitable for industrial conditions and is used in positioning requirements of rail borne vehicles. The proposed system measures distance using return time of flight (RTOF) method. The echo signal is an active signal, generated by the slave to measure distance with very high precision and accuracy. The distance between the stations can be accurately determined over a range of 300 metres using this method with the accuracy of ±50 mm.