Design Of The Railway Vehicle Remote Monitoring System

Railway transportation plays an important part in the world's transportation system. It's also a driving force for a country's economy. To China, a country of large population and massive land, the importance of railway transportation can never be neglected. In today's world, railway transportation is trying to be faster and more efficient. Thus"speed"is what it aims for. Throughout the history of the railway transportation, it is only by getting the speed up that can it regain its prominence over the road and air transportation after the World War 2. It is also because of the improvement of its speed that it pushed the economy forward, provided people with better lives. Since 1997, China railway transportation has increased railway speed significantly six times, with great success. China is still working on the railway speed, which will have a considerable impact on our economy later on.The problem China railway is facing today, however, is not the speed, but the quality of its facilities. This problem is a bottleneck of our railway infrastructure, which needs to be solved. But how? Changing the general facility is a must. What we will discuss in this essay—the railway vehicle remote monitoring system, is what we need for upgrading our railway facility.Railway vehicles are internal combustion engines vehicles that can ship and run along the rail, operating under 736KW. It is made up of an engine, a body, a rotating system, braking system, walking parts, operating system and electricity system. It is an important piece of equipment for railway repairs and other railway works.As railway vehicles are operating on fixed rails, if there are any breakdowns that didn't get fixed on time, the rails will be occupied so the other vehicles will be affected accordingly. Thus it's important that any breakdowns on the railway be diagnosed, analyzed and fixed on time. The type of railway vehicles that we are discussing in this essay are the ones operated by a remote monitoring system. All the data and problems will be transferred from the internal vehicle terminal to the operating center through GPRS. It's possible the problems be analyzed from afar and the technicians be sent to the spot on time. Also the data monitor can act as a warning system in some circumstances. The operating centre is in charge of the effectiveness of railway vehicles, making sure that the vehicles run freely and out from trouble. By using this system, higher speed of the railway transportations can be achieved.The operating system that I'm introducing here is consisted of three parts: remote database, GSM and vehicle data terminal. The vehicle data terminal collects all the data from the internal date-collecting module, gets data and information on any breakdowns that happened. Then through GPS the data is transferred to the GSM base station server, which uses the mobile data service that is provided by CMCC, to send all the information to the remote data center that connects to the Internet. The data center saves, analyzes and finds ways to fix the breaking down railway vehicles.Vehicle data terminal uses a micro monitor that is based on ARMSYS2410 to integrate a computer on a chip. The chip is an integration of ROM,EEPROM,FlashRAM,bus,COM,I/O,timer/counter,A/D,D/A.Those parts are necessary either for its functions or for its looks. It allows the hardware matches with the application to the maximum limits, so the costs can be reduced. The external facility is designed to comprise a power source,SD,resistive touch panel, and com-port,and wireless communication module. The touch panel uses LCD and resistive touch panel, which keeps the image clear even under strong sunlight.It also uses 2x25 HEADER,using Embedded Visual C++ under Microsoft Windows CE. It can develop applications such as communication ports, display ports, wireless data transfer ports,protocol ports and problem diagnosis ports. Remote data center uses a medium Internet server as a platform, making net communication possible by using the TCP/IP protocol and MSSQL server as the database, connected by ADO. The database creates individual mdb files using the local Access database. Data on every single vehicle are restored in the mdb files. Data of 100 vehicles are gathered in this essay, including the speed, fuel level, speed of engines and the signals. This essay also brings together data and malfunction information of 50 vehicles at the sampling frequency of once per minute. The frequency can be reset to up to five times per minute if needed.To increase its scalability, the application reserves the collected data and analyzes them in Microsoft Excel. The system also has improved search language. SQL is a flexible and functional database computer language. Experiments showed that the usage of SQL could improve searching speed and the effectiveness.Railway vehicle remote monitoring system made the monitoring process more effective. It assures any problems will be solved on time, trains will run smoothly and safe. With the system, railway high speed will become a reality soon.The system is developed so that the needs of railway vehicles will be met. All the data are the basic data of railways. Other data related to some specific problems will be completed later.