Design and Analysis of MMW Radar Technique for Railway Level Crossing Accident Prevention For Addis Ababa LRT
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Date
2015-03-24
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In railways, level crossings are safety-critical points because of the risk of collisions between motorcars and trains. Since electrified railway transportation system is a new technology to our country Ethiopia, it is mandatory to use intelligent means of accident prevention by detecting obstacles rather than active way of protection which is train-oriented and which it do not show the condition of level crossing.
Therefore, in order to prevent accidents in level crossings a means of detecting obstacles and controlling the related wayside signals, traffic lights and passing information to railway operator and train driver to stop the approaching train is required.
One of the many level crossing accident prevention technologies is radar system which is one of the promising from the viewpoints of preventing accidents by sensing moving or stationary obstacles, reducing operational disturbance and decreasing installation and maintenance costs due to its high Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) by implementing it properly and integrating it with the related wayside signals, traffic lights.
To this end, this thesis presents the investigation and design of an intelligent railway level crossing system to prevent accident for AALRT. In this scenario, the performance, reliability, cost effectiveness of radar system surveillance to level cross signaling are investigated and results obtained from simulations are presented.
After reviewing different types of accident prevention techniques, the Inductive loop which is widely used in most railway systems and the MMW Radar have been investigated as much as possible. And it was found that the Inductive loop has its own drawbacks like, it is unable to detect pedestrians and bicycles and also its installation and maintenance cost is very high. While the MMW Radar has been found to be effective and efficient with an excellent performance in all weather condition, day and night with a probability of detection (PD) 99.99%, Reliable with more than 10 years MTBF and 25% less expensive than the inductive loop to install and easy for maintenance.
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Keywords
Level Crossing, Accident Prevention, Obstacle/Target, MMW radar, FMCW