An Intelligent Alarm System to Detect and Control Railroad Crossings Using Wireless Sensor Networks: RailAlarm

Abstract

In India, although train accidents and derailments have come down, there has been a considerable increase in the number of accidents on unmanned railway level crossings in rural or remote areas. In this study, an intelligent railroad crossing alarm system (RailAlarm) is proposed using wireless sensor networks (WSN) to avert accidents at unmanned level crossings. The design of RailAlarm has three contributions: Firstly, a train detection mechanism has been built that triggers data in response to an approaching train. A second feature of RailAlarm is that a simple, stateless data transfer mechanism is used to forward the data to a sink and balance the power consumption. Thirdly, a novel sleep wakeup mechanism to conserve power has been designed which is a crucial feature in WSN. Based on a study of the model, the current RailAlarm design can be deployed with a maintenance interval of about once every 5 months, implying that all sensors are replaced only after 5 months with AA Batteries of 2500 mAh, after the expiry of their lifetime.