Real-Time Position and Speed Monitoring of Trains Using Phase-Sensitive OTDR

Author

Fei Peng ; Ning Duan ; Yun-Jiang Rao ; Jin Li

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Opt. Fiber Sensing & Commun., Univ. of Electron. Sci. & Technol. of China, Chengdu, China

Volume

26

Issue

20

fYear

2014

fDate

Oct.15, 15 2014

Firstpage

2055

Lastpage

2057

Abstract

It is essential to carry out real-time position and speed monitoring of trains to ensure the safety of railway operation. In this letter, the phase-sensitive optical-time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) is demonstrated to overcome the drawbacks of the track circuit, which is widely used and has the risk to be damaged by lightening, for the first time. A long sensing cable, buried nearby to two parallel railways, is used to detect the vibration signals generated by trains with Φ-OTDR and the real-time vibration signals of the trains are extracted/quantified by wavelet denoising. With the edge detection by normalized sliding variance, the operation status of two nearby trains, including their relative position and speed, are obtained over a 10.2-km measurement length in real time. This letter offers a new passive way for safety monitoring of railway operation.

Keywords

edge detection; fibre optic sensors; optical time-domain reflectometry; railway safety; railways; vibration measurement; vibrations; edge detection; lightening; long sensing cable; normalized sliding variance; phase-sensitive OTDR; phase-sensitive optical-time-domain reflectometry; railway operation safety monitoring; real-time position monitoring; real-time speed monitoring; real-time vibration signal detection; track circuit; trains; wavelet denoising; Monitoring; Optical fiber cables; Optical fiber sensors; Optical fibers; Rail transportation; Vibrations; Optical fiber sensor; optical time-domain reflectometry (OTDR); railway safety; vibration measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2014.2346760

Filename

6876143