Railway track breakage detection method using vibration estimating sensor network: A novel approach

Railway track security is prime concern of railways. Very few approaches have been implemented concerning the track breakage detection. In this paper we are proposing an algorithm for deployment of vibration sensors on the track and simulating communication among the sensors in real time. We also suggest a method to regularly update train engine about the track´s status and exact location of the track breakage. Communication takes place on a full duplex channel from sensors to sink and from sink to train. Multi-hop routing strategy has been used for which sender and receivers are sensors, trains and sink. The forwarding nodes are poles which have no sensor need, they are equipped only with transceivers. Certain advantages of the proposed method are: very few message parameters to maintain real time requirements in the decision making with highly consistent decision in comparison to previous approaches. Node has the minimum processing and decision making needs, so cost of nodes will be very less. Decision making is done separately for left and right track making the sensing more sensitive. No preprocessing on the data is done and exact output with precise coordinates, no fuzzy estimation. Aggregation in the proposed method is deterministic which gives exact location of crack whereas in complex fuzzy based approaches approximate location is identified so there is no guarantee for real time success.