Research And Design Of Information Collecting System For Railway Container Based On ZigBee Technology

Container transport, being efficient, convenient and safe, is a significant means of transport modernization. Along with the rapid economic development in our country, the container throughput has been rapidly increasing. Nowadays, the information technology and network technology are highly advanced and widely popularized. Nevertheless, although container is a mainly used transport carrier, the application of IT in container transport is quite out of date. This situation is far from meeting the requirements for visible, real-time information in modern logistics. It is especially in railway transport that the automatization level is low. At present, plenty of manual work exists in railway transport, owing to which inefficiency and numerous errors are caused. In the case of block container train, the containers' arrival and departure are concentrative and a lot of work should be handled at the same time, therefore, the problems from manual work are more noticeable. In the management information system for containers, information collecting is the most important among these work efficiency impacting factors. Consequently, in order to deal with the present problems, improving the efficiency and the accuracy of information collecting under secure conditions is the key. ZigBee is a new wireless network technology for short distance communication, with low energy consumption and low data speed. The appropriate usage of this technology can give improvements in railway container transport.In this thesis are firstly analyzed the existent problems in current container information collecting system, meanwhile, with aiming at these problems, the advantages of ZigBee technology in container information collecting process are illustrated. In addition, the characteristics and the protocol stack structure of ZigBee are presented. With analyzing and inter-comparing the various wireless connection technologies, research work is done on feasibility of using ZigBee in railway container transport.Secondly, with taking into account the environment of railway freight station, the topological structure of ZigBee network is designed. Additionally, based on the requirements of container information collecting, the mechanism of container information collecting system on the basis of ZigBee is demonstrated. In the meantime, several important technologies in ZigBee wireless sensor network are analyzed, such as the positioning technologies, the security etc. The preliminary design is then made for the container information collecting system based on ZigBee. On this basis, an information collecting process is analyzed, which is in the environment of railway freight station and which consists of establishing the network, joining the network, transferring data and leaving the network.Finally, based on the topological structure of the network, and based on the actual conditions in railway freight station, simulation is done with using NS2 simulation software. The simulation work gives, for ZigBee wireless sensor network, the performance data of the static nodes, and that under different moving speeds. Due to the simulation the reliability of using ZigBee in container information collecting is proven. In the end, the realization work is done with CC2430 chip.