Abstract
In recent years, the range of sensing technologies has expanded rapidly, whereas sensor devices have become cheaper. This has led to a rapid expansion in condition monitoring of systems, structures, vehicles, and machinery using sensors. Key factors are the recent advances in networking technologies such as wireless communication and mobile ad hoc networking coupled with the technology to integrate devices. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be used for monitoring the railway infrastructure such as bridges, rail tracks, track beds, and track equipment along with vehicle health monitoring such as chassis, bogies, wheels, and wagons. Condition monitoring reduces human inspection requirements through automated monitoring, reduces maintenance through detecting faults before they escalate, and improves safety and reliability. This is vital for the development, upgrading, and expansion of railway networks. This paper surveys these wireless sensors network technology for monitoring in the railway industry for analyzing systems, structures, vehicles, and machinery. This paper focuses on practical engineering solutions, principally, which sensor devices are used and what they are used for; and the identification of sensor configurations and network topologies. It identifies their respective motivations and distinguishes their advantages and disadvantages in a comparative review.
Highlights
E XPERTS estimate that the railway industry will receive US$300 billion worth of global investment for development, upgrading, and expansion over the five years from 2009 [43]
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) monitoring provides continuous and near real-time data acquisition and autonomous data acquisition; increased frequency of monitoring compared with manual inspection; improved data accessibility, data management, and data use compared with non-networked systems as all data can be collected and processed centrally; the ability to combine data from a wide variety of sensors; intelligent analysis of data to “predict and prevent” events using intelligent algorithms; the ability to turn data into information about the status of important structures, infrastructure and machinery; and, a global data view that allows trending information to be determined where degradation is happening slowly over a relatively long period of time
If there are errors in transmission across the WSN, data may be missing. These last two points form a paradox, WSNs need to minimize energy usage yet communication needs to be maximally efficient and communication requires energy. This survey paper describes WSNs for railway condition monitoring focusing on systems described in the academic literature
Summary
E XPERTS estimate that the railway industry will receive US$300 billion worth of global investment for development, upgrading, and expansion over the five years from 2009 [43]. WSN monitoring provides continuous and near real-time data acquisition and autonomous data acquisition (no supervision is required); increased frequency of monitoring compared with manual inspection; improved data accessibility, data management, and data use compared with non-networked systems as all data can be collected and processed centrally; the ability to combine data from a wide variety of sensors; intelligent analysis of data to “predict and prevent” events using intelligent algorithms; the ability to turn data into information about the status of important structures, infrastructure and machinery; and, a global data view that allows trending information to be determined where degradation is happening slowly over a relatively long period of time. These last two points form a paradox, WSNs need to minimize energy usage yet communication needs to be maximally efficient and communication requires energy This survey paper describes WSNs for railway condition monitoring focusing on systems described in the academic literature.
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