Satellite Based Train Monitoring System

Presentation on Satellite Based Train Monitoring System

Introduction
Transportation is a large & important part of the economy & the need for transportation increase continuously. Train is one of the main & biggest transportation system in Bangladesh. Everyday thousands of people travel in train to different destinations. For good customer service it is their responsibility to have a good management system.
So it is necessary for them to have a clear idea about the actual position, speed, time to reach destination of a particular train at every instant.
But unfortunately there is no such system that could give them clear idea about the situation. What they do is, they divide the total network in kilometer blocks & approximates the position of a particular train.
Existing Monitoring System
The existing conventional monitoring system most of the times relay on the oral communication through telephonic and telegraphic conversations. In our railway system, when train crosses a station & sets for next station the rail track between the two station is locked & no other train are permitted to enter in that locked section. A station can only senses a train within its 1200 ft. range.
When a train crosses this limit a station can only tell the train is somewhere between the two station but cannot tell in which particular position & at what speed the train is heading to the next station. This miscommunication may lead to wrong allocation of the track for trains, which ultimately leads to the train collision.
When a train passes a station it blocks the total link up to next station. If the train makes too late to reach the next station then they check the link manually. If problem exists it takes hours to know for them about the problem.
In our project we have implemented a Satellite based Train Monitoring System that would give the status of a train at any instant. This status can be viewed by the train control room as well as any passenger who want to access it.
Objectives:
  1. To monitor the status of a particular train at any instant.
  2. This system will also provide a way to minimize the accidents & helps to minimize the human errors which cause accidents.
  3. Passengers who will travel by train can know the status of their train by internet at any time. This would help him to make decision about his traveling.
  4. The monitoring could be done from various points which will reduce human errors.
Project Overview
GPS (global positioning system) is a device that can give its own longitude, latitude, speed etc. from the orbiting satellites. There are 24 satellites orbiting our earth. These satellites transmit transparent data to earth. A GPS receives the data from the satellites those can be viewed by the device & calculates its status.
AVL VT310 GPS-GPRS module
Fig: AVL VT310 GPS-GPRS module.
Flow Diagram of GPS based train monitoring system
Fig: Flow Diagram of GPS based train monitoring system
Position updating in Google Map from client end
Fig: Position updating in Google Map from client end
In our system we will use GPS-GSM/GPRS module to collect the position information of a train at every instant & passes this information to a web-server via man –machine interface.
As new data being inserted to the database, it will update the location information containing speed, distance from a particular station etc. of the train at the client end when requested.
Man machine interface can also become a useful tool for preciously locating a train in a track. An operator in the train will continuously update the track number in the computer connected with the GPS.
With the introduction of man machine interface , our system should look somewhat like this:
man machine interface
Bangladesh Railway Route Map
The data served by GPS & from the computer will be accumulated by the server & the server will be able to give accurate position with track number & will make the decision when & in which track the train should arrive at the next crossing.
Important Attributes:
Our system will be cost effective. This system
  1. will reduce the work force required;
  2. will definitely reduce train accident;
  3. Late running of trains can be prevented to large extend.
Conclusion
The implementation of our proposed system will contribute a lot in automation of our railway system. The introduction of digital maps could make the system even better & as the positions could be accurately measured.
We have made a small step in making our train controlling & monitoring system automatic & error free. We have to go a long way to make it fully functional. Our government has a big role to play in these regards.
Submitted by BY Rajesh Mozumder and Jiban Chandra Bhowmik