LabVIEW BASED APPROACHING TRAIN WARNING SYSTEM (ATWS)

Group no : Guide : Group members :

5 Mr. Arun Joseph Asst. Prof., AEI Dept. Ajos Francis (04) Devika C.T (23) Dhanya Vincent (24) Jeswin Benny (30) Pinky Davis (41)

INTRODUCTION At present scenario, in level crossings, the railway gate is operated normally by a gatekeeper after receiving the information about the train's arrival. When a train starts to leave a station, station master of the particular station delivers the information to the near by gate. The above said procedures are followed for operating the railway gates. Semiautomatic railway gate operation is also followed in certain areas. Signals are located in the vicinity of the railway gate along with gate master board and a marker light. Our paper deals with automatic railway gate control i.e. gate operated with out gate keepers. It is implemented in unmanned level crossings at remote areas. This project utilizes two powerful IR transmitters and two receivers; one pair of transmitter and receiver is fixed at up side (from where the train comes) at a level higher than a human being in exact alignment and similarly the other pair is fixed at down side of the train direction. Sensor activation time is so adjusted by calculating the time taken at a certain speed to cross at least one compartment of standard minimum size of the Indian railway. We have considered 5 seconds for this project. Sensors are fixed at 1km on both sides of the gate. We call the sensor along the train direction as foreside sensor and the other as after side sensor. When foreside receiver gets activated, the gate motor is turned on in one direction and the gate is closed and stays closed until the train crosses the gate and reaches aft side sensors. When aft side receiver gets activated motor turns in opposite direction and gate opens and motor stops. Buzzer will immediately sound at the fore side receiver activation and gate will close after 5 seconds, so giving time to drivers to clear gate area in order to avoid trapping between the gates and stop sound after the train has crossed.

Why To Automate Level Cross?

In India 38341 level crossings are present in which 16549 level crossing are manned and rest 21792 level crossings are unmanned. On this network 14 million people and more than a million tones of freight moves daily. Thus it is essential that all the aspects of this network are up and running securely and safely round the clock. If all unmanned level crossings are to be manned, Railways require approximately Rs. 2450 crores as Capital cost to man them and approximately Rs. 700 crores per annum will be required to meet the maintenance and operation cost. The cost of manning with interlocked signals will be around Rs. 5500 crores. However, to eliminate probability of any accident at manned and unmanned level crossings, construction of Road over bridges and Road under bridges may be envisaged, but it will involve staggering amount of Rs. 4,00,000 crores.There 20 % accidents occur due to manned and unmanned level crossing. Thus it becomes essential to monitor the level crossing of Indian railways for enhancing security of people and make it more reliable.

Methodology
The first step of proposed methodology is to choose a suitable sensor for detection of train approaching and departure. So we choose IR (infra red) sensors as the sensors because it can use for both short range and long range application. IR sensor consists of an IR transmitter and IR receiver. The sensor senses the arrival of the train and this signal is transmitted using a Data Acquisition (DAQ) card. The received datas are processed in a computer using Lab VIEW and controls the gate control. The Lab VIEW based PCs of the current station and nearby one will be communicated through a TCP/IP communication link. The user interface is possible in Lab VIEW. The gate will open and close automatically according to the control signal from the processing unit.