Safe Railway Crossing System based on Zigbee ...

Computing Conference 2017 18-20 July 2017 | London, UK

Safe Railway Crossing System based on Zigbee Communication Razi Iqbal

Dawer Saeed

College of Computer Information Technology American University in the Emirates Dubai, United Arab Emirates [email protected]

Al-Khawarizmi Institute of Computer Science University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan [email protected]

Abstract—This paper proposes a safe railway crossing system based on ZigBee communication which is low cost and power efficient. The major reason for proposing this system is to automate the system of railway crossing and avoiding the accidents. This system is targeted towards developing countries where railway crossing is not efficient enough and human resource is required to manually manage the railway crossing gates. One of the reasons of not using automated railway crossing systems in developing countries is the overall high cost of the system which is not affordable by the developing countries. In order to overcome this problem, this paper proposes a low cost and power efficient railway crossing system. Due to inexpensive nature and energy efficiency of ZigBee wireless modules, they are chosen to be used for proposing this system. Several experiments have already been conducted to gauge the overall efficiency of ZigBee communication in outdoor environment that prove reliability of data delivery using ZigBee modules. Keywords—zigbee; wireless communication; wireless sensor networks; power efficiency; cost effectiveness

I.

INTRODUCTION

Railway is considered one of the most convenient ways of travelling these days. Due to increase in the traffic on roads, trains are becoming popular choice for traveling for almost all kinds of people. Developed countries have a comprehensive railway system which is extended to thousands of miles while connecting different cities. Developing countries are also striving hard to adopt the railway systems for connecting their cities. However, due to high cost sometimes it’s not possible for developing countries to adopt state of the art technology being used throughout the world to improve and secure their already existing infrastructure. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained immense popularity because of their nature and capability to gather information. Wireless nature of these sensor networks have made them convenient to use in outdoor environments as well. These WSNs are now used in almost all the daily life domains, e.g., HealthCare, Education, Transportation, Agriculture and Manufacturing industry etc. Advancements in WSNs have significantly increased their efficiency and decreased the overall cost which makes them an excellent choice to be used in establishing systems for developing countries where cost is considered one of the most influential factors for developing and deploying a smart system.

Currently WSNs are used to improve many systems in different domains by gathering important information from the field, e.g., Agriculture [1]. This information is then analyzed to take certain actions which results in improving the efficiency of these systems. These WSNs are also used in railway systems to monitor railway infrastructure like platforms, railway tracks, bridges and track beds etc. Use of WSNs for collecting this information not only reduces human effort for monitoring but also provides accurate information by avoiding human mistakes. This paper discusses the use of WSNs in railway crossings to make them safe and automated for developing countries. The paper proposes use of ZigBee sensors to reduce the overall cost of the system. Furthermore, since railway crossings can be in areas where electricity can be an issue; use of ZigBee sensors would help coop with the power requirements since these sensors require very small amount of power to operate that reduces the hassle of changing batteries on regular basis. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II discusses already available solutions by reviewing the literature. Section III describes proposed system model. Section IV illustrates the system flow. Section V provides details about the use of ZigBee and its efficiency by highlighting experimental data. Finally, the last part concludes the article. II.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Since after the invention of engine it has been under constant research to make it more efficient and safe for environment. The world started changing drastically after railways started to connect the world. And more and more people started to work in this field. Every invention has its own benefits and drawbacks as well. So with such an enormous speed the accidents started to result in instant causalities. Many safety measures have been implemented and used since then. Since it started from Britain, a study by Andrew W Evans [2] has shown an analysis by representing the fatal train accidents on Britain’s main line railways. Only in the year 2000 the number of fatalities were 159, major injuries were 550 and minor injuries were 5774. And these fatalities have reduced year by year. In Pakistan in year 2013, fourteen causalities were recorded only in one accident. A rickshaw got onto the railway track and

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Computing Conference 2017 18-20 July 2017 | London, UK got hit by the train. According to a news [3] an eyewitness said that, “there were no gates on the railway crossing.” Among the dead two of them were children under the age of 12. These types of causalities can be avoided if authorities implement an automated railway system based on Wireless Sensor network as presented in this paper. A low cost and power efficient automated traffic control system has been presented by Razi [4]. A ZigBee module is used to control the traffic lights in the streets from a central control center. The proposed system in the study also uses ZigBee Communication to send the commands to the signals on the road. One of the major benefit of this system is that it can be controlled remotely and instantaneously. If the traffic is jam in a specific route the traffic can even be diverted through the control system instead of going to the signal and manually programming it. Another study by Mohamed Rawidean Mohd Kassim [5] has shown the use of WSN in agriculture. They have used a GSM based node to measure the humidity, temperature and moisture content on the farm and then send them to the internet using GSM module. Later on this data can be used to perform different kinds of processing and management for the precision agriculture. They have also concluded that in such a controlled greenhouse environment using WSN, the automatic irrigation is more efficient as compared to scheduled irrigation. It not only removes the tedious manual task but also saves water usage and fertilizer. On the similar notes Jonathan Jao [6] and Jianfa Xia [7] also described such work based on WSNs. They also used wireless sensor network to read different greenhouse parameters using remote devices, and then send that data to the remote server where they use that data to manipulate or take any decision for the farm to yield more output while saving many resources. In the study presented here a WSN has been used to indicate the arrival of train and to close the gate before even it reaches at the gate. Much of the work has also been done in the domain of railways specifically in the perspective of WSNs. G. M. Shafiullah [8] has proposed such a low cost system to monitor the health of railway wagons which are attached to a moving locomotive. They are achieving it by using different sensor nodes on every wagon, which are connected to each other using ad-hoc networking. And at the engine there is a gateway that collects all the data to be sent to the server. Similarly, WSN based model for secure railways has also been introduced by Emad Aboelela [9]. They implement a multilayer multi-path routing tree network to send the data to the control center. Gunyoung KIM has presented his work on railway gate control system at railroad-highway grade crossing in Korea [10]. The work is based on the magnetic sensors input and gate control system on railways. They have also concluded that after installing this system there were no accidents recorded. As a whole the system decreases the accidents to about 68.6% of total rail accidents. Different work has been already done using WSNs in different fields. Some systems only use WSN but not to the

perspective of safety and some have presented their work on safety but not with WSN. The presented paper provides both safety while using WSNs. The presented system has been designed in such a way to keep the cost as low as possible especially for the developing countries. III.

PROPOSED SYSTEM MODEL

Fig. 1. Proposed System Model for Safe Railway Crossing

Fig. 1 illustrates the proposed system model for safe railway crossing system. As shown in the figure, the railway track contains a ZigBee sensor (pressure sensor + ZigBee module) that detects the train. As soon as the train is detected, this information is sent to the other ZigBee module (Host) installed at the crossing gate using ZigBee Communication (IEEE 802.15.4). When this information is received at the railway crossing gate by Host which is connected to an Arduino microcontroller board that operates the opening and closing of the railway crossing gate; the gate is closed and alarm bells start ringing (Alarming Red Lights). These Alarming Red Lights are also controlled by Arduino microcontroller. As soon as the train passes the crossing gate, Arduino sends the signal to actuator to open the gate. Several ZigBee modules are available in the market that have different communication range. However, in this case XBee Pro modules are used for proposing the system since their communication range is around 1 mile. As illustrated in the figure, the ZigBee sensor would be installed at around 1 mile from the Host since the length and speed of the trains can vary. Use of alarm lights is a traditional way of warning people around and still considered one of the best, so this system uses alarm lights to warn about the approaching train. IV.

PROPOSED SYSTEM FLOW

Figure 2 illustrates the flow of the proposed system. As shown in the figure, the flow starts with ZigBee sensor node waiting for detection of the train. As soon as the train is detected, this information is sent to the ZigBee Host module installed at the railway crossing gate. Arduino authenticates the information for legitimacy and if it passes the authentication, Arduino sends the signal to alarm lights in order to inform the people around that train is approaching and gate is closing. ZigBee Host module keeps on checking the train whether it has passed or not. As soon as the train passes, the gate is opened by Arduino using actuator installed for opening and closing the gate.

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Computing Conference 2017 18-20 July 2017 | London, UK VI.

SIMULATION RESULTS

In order to gauge the efficiency of ZigBee in outdoor environment, several experiments were performed in different scenarios. Table 2 below shows experimental data: TABLE II.

50m 80m 100m

Fig. 2. Proposed System Flow

V.

ZIGBEE COMMUNICATION

ZigBee is categorized as Personal Area Network (PAN) technology. Due to its short range and power efficiency it is well suited for applications that are cost and power conscious. TABLE I. Cost Battery Data Rate Complexity Nodes Ease of use Range Security Power

ZIGBEE COMPARISON WITH ITS SISTER TECHNOLOGIES ZigBee $3 Years 250Kbps Low 65536 Simple 30~100m High 25 to 35 mA

Bluetooth $10 Hours 1Mbps Medium 7 Moderate 10m High 40 mA

Wi-Fi Expensive N/A 11 Mbps High 20-250 Restrictive 100m ~ Low 400 mA ~

As mentioned in the table above, ZigBee is cost effective and power efficient. Although the range of ZigBee modules is not much but still PRO models of ZigBee can range up to 1 miles which is sufficient for transferring small amount of data based on sensors. Furthermore, ZigBee is less complex than Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as it is easy to configure and use. Talking about using ZigBee in the outdoor environment, it is important to consider the security aspect of the technology, which is highly secure in case of ZigBee since, it uses state of the art security encryption techniques.

EXPERIMENTAL DATA FOR ZIGBEE EFFICIENCY IN OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENT Bytes Sent 5 10 15 5 10 15 5 10 15

Bytes Received 5 10 15 5 10 15 5 10 15

Transfer Time (millisecond) 0.576ms 0.579ms 0.499ms 0.591ms 0.576ms 0.587ms 0.711ms 0.788ms 0.728ms

Error % 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 2%

Table 2 shows the data collected from experiments conducted to gauge the efficiency of ZigBee in outdoor environments. For the purpose of these experiments, only small amount of data is transferred (5 - 15 bytes) since the data would only be used to send the availability of train which would not require more than 5 bytes in any case. However, in some cases other data is also required to send, so experiments were conducted for maximum of 15 bytes of data transfer. As illustrated in the table above, normally ZigBee communication for range of around 50m to 100m is smooth and efficient. Data is transferred fast and without errors. Sometimes slight errors can occur which are ignorable. Table also shows the transfer rate time between two ZigBee modules, which for this system seems appropriate since the transfer rate is between 0.499ms to 0.788ms. Even if train is travelling at 200mphr, this data transfer rate would be sufficient enough to perform an action before train actually arrives at the railway crossing gate. VII. CONCLUSION The paper proposes a model for safe railway crossing for developing countries. The major aim of the proposed model is to develop a railway crossing system which is safe, reliable and cost effective. In order to make a cost effective system, the paper proposes the use of ZigBee modules for wireless communication between Wireless Sensor Networks. These ZigBee modules are low cost and power efficient and help in developing a system which is low cost and power efficient which is best suited for developing countries where cost and power are major players for development and deployment of a smart system. Furthermore, the system reduces the human effort and eventually the human errors by automating the system but still keeping it less costly. The model proposed in the system can be used for designing other smart systems that use wireless sensor networks for communication. [1]

[2]

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http://tribune.com.pk/story/573291/8-killed-in-train-accident-nearsheikhupura/ R. Iqbal, D. Saeed, and H. Sherazi. "Low cost and power efficient automated traffic control system using IEEE 802.15. 4." In 2015 6th International Conference on Computing, Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT), pp. 1-5. M. Kassim, R. Mohd, I. Mat, and A.N. Harun. "Wireless Sensor Network in precision agriculture application." In Computer, Information and Telecommunication Systems (CITS), 2014 International Conference on, pp. 1-5. J. Jao, B. Sun, and K. Wu. "A prototype wireless sensor network for precision agriculture." In Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW), 2013 IEEE 33rd International Conference on, pp. 280-285. J. Xia, Z. Tang, X. Shi, L. Fan, and H. Li. "An environment monitoring system for precise agriculture based on wireless sensor networks."

In Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (MSN), 2011 Seventh International Conference on, pp. 28-35. [8] G.M. Shafiullah, A. Gyasi-Agyei, and P. Wolfs. "Survey of wireless communications applications in the railway industry." In Wireless Broadband and Ultra Wideband Communications, 2007. AusWireless 2007. The 2nd International Conference on, pp. 65-65. [9] E. Aboelela, W. Edberg, C. Papakonstantinou, and V. Vokkarane. "Wireless sensor network based model for secure railway operations." In Performance, Computing, and Communications Conference, 2006. IPCCC 2006. 25th IEEE International, pp. 6-pp. [10] G. Kim, K. Kang, S. Ji, H. Chung, K. Shin, and C. Lee. "Railway gate control system at railroad-highway grade crossings in Korea." In Proceedings of the 9th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems. Chicago, Illinois. 2002.

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