Railway Transponder Detection System

When the train is in high speed on the railway, balise, as a key component of the CTCS(Chinese Train Control System), effectively ensures the reliable signal transmission between the train and the ground equipment. However, due to the high speed, the wireless signal strength between the train and the ground equipment is greatly influenced by the installation location of balise. So, there are strict specifications and requirements about where to install the balise between two tracks. At present, during the installation process, manual or fractional mechanical–aided testing method is still used to determine whether the installation location of balise is line with the requirements or not, which is not only time consuming but also not accurate. To overcome the drawbacks of manual inspection, it is significant and necessary that a set of high-precision and automatic balise detection system for the installation and routine inspection is developed.In this paper, the hand-held instrument part of the balise detection system is developed, including hardware circuit design and embedded software design. In hardware circuit design, the main task that electronic components selection for each module, specific circuit design, hardware anti-jamming design, printed circuit board design, welding, and testing has been done. In embedded software design, the main modules that microcontroller peripheral interface driver, display processing, keyboard scanning, displacement and signal measurement and serial communication have been designed. Also, in order to improve the reliability of the embedded software, the corresponding anti-jamming measures have been added into software design. Besides, low power device has been used to reduce the power consumption of the meter for the battery usage time and life time. Finally, the hand-held instrument debug as well as the joint debug with sensors, signal detection circuit, PC software have been completed, and the hand-held instrument design is also fulfilled. The balise detection system has been identified by relevant departments and will be put into production.