IEEE International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies

(ICICCT 2018)

Unmanned Level Crossing Controller and Rail

Track Broken Detection System Using IR
Sensors and Internet of Things Technology
Bharti S.Dhande , Utkarsha S.Pacharaney
Department of Electronics and Tele-communication Engineering
DMCE, University of Mumbai, Airoli, Navi Mumbai - 400708
Email: bhartidhande4444@gmail.com , utk21pac76@gmail.com

ASTRACT- Railways provide the cheapest and most intersection of a road and a railway line, requires
convenient mode of passenger transport both for long human coordination, the lack of which leads to
distance and suburban traffic. Also, most of transport accidents, also the main problem about railway
in India is being carried out by railway network. Still analysis is detection of the crack in the location .If
accidents are the major concern in terms of railway this problem are not controlled at early stages they
track crossing and unidentified crack in rail tracks in might lead to a number of derailment resulting in
Indian railway. About 60% accidents are occurring at heavy loss of life and property. In traditional system
railway track crossing and due to crack in railway level crossings are managed by the gatekeeper and
tracks resulting in loss of precious life and loss of the gatekeeper is instructed by the means of
economy. Therefore there is need to think about new telephone at most of the level cross from the control
technology which is robust, efficient and stable for both room. But the rate of manual error that could occur at
automatic gate closure system and crack detection in these level crosses are high because they are unsafe
railway track. This paper proposes an unmanned gate to perform without actual knowledge about the train
crossing and faulty rail track detection. Unmanned level time table. Delay in the opening and closing of the
crossing is a IR sensors base system and crack detection
gate could lead to railway accidents. In order to avoid
the human errors that could occur during the
is an dynamic approach which combines the use of GPS
operation of gates and derailment due to crack , the
(global positioning system) tracking system and GSM
proposed paper introduces the concept of railway
(global system for mobile communication) modem to
gate automation and crack detection system has been
send geographical coordinate of location. Unmanned
modified by using IR sensors and IOT (Internet of
gate crossing controller system prevents accident
Things) technology which performs automatic gate
which are caused due to railway track crossing and operation and helps in detecting of the faulty track.
railway crack detection system prevents train The IOT represents the coordination of multiple
derailment by detecting crack in railway track using vendors’ machines, devices and appliances connected
internet of things technology. to the Internet through multiple networks. To find the
location of the faulty track, we have designed IOT
Index Term- unmanned gate crossing ,GSM modem, website using Xammp sever . We have also used
GPS module , IR transmitter and Receiver, Internet of GPS and GSM modem. GPS is used to read the
Things technology current latitude and longitude data. GSM modem is
used to send the current latitude and longitude data
on hosted server.
I. INTRODUCTION
The rest of paper is organized as follows .Section
II gives a review of the previous papers that relate to
The railway system is the most commonly used
our work. Section III describes a working of
transportation mode in India. It is also one of those
proposed system. The experimental results are
modes of transport that faces a lot of challenges due
discussed in Section IV and the conclusion of the
to human errors such as level cross accidents,
work is discussed in Section V.
collisions due to broken track etc. A level cross, an

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II.LITERATURE SURVEY Selvamraju somalraju et.al proposed a system that

utilizes LED-LDR configuration for railway crack
Security in the unmanned railway crossings has detection. RRCDS utilizes simple component
always been a matter of uncertainty. Many various inclusive of GPS module, GSM modem and LED
systems have been proposed and some implemented based crack detector assembly[11]. Qiao jian-hau
but they have some shortcomings. Some system have proposed a system that takes the linear charged
poor stability and performance while others utilize couple device(CCD) as a image sensor , processes the
active sensors which defects like instability and short image signal collected ,judges out the crack signal
reliable life cycle , hence requiring replacement every ,Display the curve through LCD and gives off
few years and thereby making the system expensive. alarm.[12].K.Vijayakumar et.al has investigated
FM communication system has been used to crack detection using microwave sensors. It describes
automatically close gates. There are two IR how a Microwave horn antenna can be used to detect
transmitters and receivers. Also sensors are present the crack in a rail track[13].Richard J. Greene et. al
on either side of the level crossing at a distance of have presented a new crack detection method for rail
1km. Hence depending on the activation of the which utilizes the change in infrared emission of the
corresponding sensors, the closing and opening of the rail surface during the passage of the train wheel[14].
gate are performed[1] . A GPS receiver was designed We have proposed new method which utilizes
and operated to monitor the L-band amplitude components inclusive of a GPS module, GSM
scintillations. Thus the ionospheric irregularities are modem, IR sensors for the prevention of accidents
monitored[2]. Zig- Bee based train anti-collision and which are caused due to level crossing and
level crossing protection system consists of 4 derailment due to crack in the railway track.
modules: train module, control center module,
signaling part module, and level crossing gate III. PROPOSED SYSTEM WORKING
module[3] .Microcontrollers and IR sensors have
been employed to automatically close the gates at the In this proposed system we used LPC2148
level crossings. Hence, the errors due to manual error Microcontroller. It is a 64 pin High Performance
can be avoided and a fast response system is ARM microcontroller. It is also tiny size and low
obtained[4] . A programmable logic controller can be power consumption microcontroller. Due to their tiny
used to automatically close gates at the level size and low power consumption, LPC2148 are ideal
crossings. These controllers can be programmed for for application where miniaturization is a key
respective mechanisms of operations, technical requirement ,such as access control system. It has
diagnostic aiding in fault detection and remote serial communication interfaces ranging from a USB
monitoring [5]. A programmable logic controller 2.0 Full Speed device , multiple UARTS,SPI,SSP to
based arrangement using the ladder diagram is I2Cs.It has on-chip SRAM of 8 kb up to 40kb. This
designed and programmed which can be employed at makes devices very well suited for communication
all the unmanned level crossings. This has proved to gateway .In this paper we have proposed two
be an economical system [6]. A track monitoring systems.
system using a probe-vehicle system was designed.
Here the rail irregularities are estimated. GPS and A. Unmanned gate crossing controller system
map matching techniques have been used to locate
the faults on the tracks. In-service vehicle were used Unmanned gate crossing controller system used FM
to carry out the experiments [7]. The usual railway communication system. It has one arrival point at 3
interlocking devices comprising of large wiring and km distance on one side and one departure point at
cables is replaced by utilizing optical LAN which 3km distance for train from the level crossing. At the
significantly reduces the signal cables and wiring level crossing, proposed system have microcontroller
works. A data-driven method was employed to for receiving the signal from sensors and as per
replace the interlocking device and making receiving signal opening and closing of gate are
operations easy[8]. GPS and GSM were used for a performed. When train comes at arrival point i.e
crossing warning system. This increases passing Arrival IR sensor, sensor sense the arrival of the
efficiency in railway crossing [9].A swift response train and send signal at the level crossing and at the
system using a pressure sensor is used for an same time closing of the gate are performed.
automatic railway gate control. The sensor senses the Similarly when train goes at departure point i.e
arrival and departure is train to control the opening Departure IR sensor, IR sensor sense the departure
and closing operations of the gate. Operation of the of the train and send signal at the level crossing and
system is controlled by a microcontroller. Hence it opening of the gate performed.
consists of motor, IR sensor and microcontroller[10].

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 International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies
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B. Crack detection system

In the Crack detection system, Before the start of the

rail-way line scan the robot has been programmed to IR
IR
self calibrate the IR transmitter and receiver. After DEPAR- MICROCO- ARRIVAL
calibration, the robot wait for the predetermined TURE NTROLLERE SENSOR
period of time so that the GPS module start reading SENSOR
the correct geographic coordinate. The principle
involved in this crack detection is that light reaching
the IR receiver is proportional to the intensity of the STEPPER
DRIVER
crack. Both IR transmitter and receiver will be placed
MOTOR
straight line to each other on rail. During operation
,when the light from the transmitter does not fall on
receiver so that it gives result NO Crack found. And Fig.2:Block Diagram of Unmanned gate crossing
when light from the transmitter fall on receiver i.e controller system
light deviates from the path due to crack in the
railway track then it gives result as a crack found. In
order to detect current location of the train in case of
detection of crack ,we have used GPS receiver whose
function is to receive the current latitude and
longitude data. And this latitude and longitude date
will be send by GSM modem to IOT website. We
have managed this crack detection system using
internet of things technology .On IOT website we
will get information about train in terms of train no.
lat, long, crack YES or NO and date.

POWER SUPPLY

M
I IR Fig.3:Combine Circuit Diagram of proposed systems
RESET
C RECEI
-VER
R
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
O
C MAX
The component are assembled and program was
IR -232
O burned in LPC2148 microcontroller. For testing
TRANS-
purpose we used stepper motor to get pulley up down
MITTER N
at the level crossing in the unmanned gate crossing
T controller system and crack detection was managed
R GSM and monitored by IOT. For that We introduced
GPS O MOD- xammp server. Xammp server is integrated with
MAX- EM Mysql and PHP. The program is done using PHP
RECEI
-VER 232 L language.PHP is scripting language and Mysql is
L open source database. we have used Mysql to store
E PC and manage the data and we have accessed the
R database using hosted website(IOT). In crack
detection system we used aluminium frame for
testing purpose kept in the form of track and model
Fig.1: Block Diagram of Crack detection system was made to travel through it. We included break
manually and found that device successfully detected
that user created crack and current latitude and
longitude values were received by the GPS module.
POWER SUPPLY

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However, as the railway track did not contain crack, V. CONCLUSION

we were unable to test GSM and GPS.
This system proposed has been a very reliable one.
We can prevent heavy loss of life using internet of
things technology and IR sensor based system. The
proposed unmanned railway gate crossing system
perform automatic opening and closing gate function
without help of human participation and also railway
track broken system automatically detects faulty
railway track without human intervention. There are
many advantages with the proposed system when
compared with the traditional system. The advantage
include less cost ,low power ,high accuracy, low
power consumption ,less analysis time and main
advantages in crack detection is that we can centrally
manage this system using internet of things
technology and we can find the exact location of the
faulty track using hosted website (IOT) so that many
lives can be saved.

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