Development of a Wireless Train Traffic Control System

Abstract

To this day, South Africa is faced with difficulties when it comes to the Train Transportation Industry. One of the main concerns are the continual theft of cables on railways across the country, causing constant delays and the increasingly waste of energy and money. These delays affect people’s jobs and livelihood in very real ways, causing job losses and ineffective performance. This needs to be solved with innovative thinking and the application of engineering design methodology and thorough research. Engineering research and design will be applied in the pursuit of rendering train traffic control wireless. The aim is to take key aspects from train traffic control in a broad sense and to transform these aspects to wireless systems. This will be accomplished with in-depth study into the current and past railway industry, identifying areas to be transformed, finding ways to use current technology with Wi-Fi capabilities and form concepts to solve these challenging problems. If this problem can be solved, the implications of a new design can be applied to more problems across the country. These problems include, fire deterrent and prevention applications, railway safety in terms of drivers and ground operators and energy conservation and environmental applications.