Global Positioning System Based Automated Railway Level Crossing

Abstract

Due to their ability to reduce unwanted accidents, automatic railway level crossings are gaining popularity in modern transportation systems. Many systems have been proposed and tested to achieve the desired automation, none of which have been considered a standard. Global positioning system is an effective and fast mode of communication and may be considered as an accurate tool to determine ones navigational information. The present work proposes an algorithm to automate the railway level crossings, which works based on global positioning system data. An experiment has been conducted to detect one onboard location from a stationary point, with the help of Global Positioning System. The proposed system does not require the installation of track-side hardware and thus reduces maintenance cost by avoiding issues such as continuous monitoring and protection against vandalism.