High-precision protective system escorts rail transportation

CHANGSHA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Smaller than an A4 piece of paper, with a weight of about five kilograms and the shape of a household toolbox, a multi-scene active train protection system, based on China's homegrown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) high-precision map, escorts both passengers and trains.

Rail transportation has been functioning in tandem with Automatic Train Protection (ATP), which works through the coordination of ground equipment and on-board equipment to control train speed and monitor safety spacing in order to prevent incidents such as excessive speed and rear-end collisions.

When train operations are not protected by ATP during testing and debugging of lines and in dispatching areas, safety risks increase due to the limitations of manual operation.

CRRC Zhuzhou Electric Co., Ltd in central China's Hunan Province has promoted the application of BDS in the railway industry, driven by market demand.

The company uses the multi-scene active train protection system to locate the train's real-time position and speed.

Combining the preset threshold values of high-precision maps, the system compares the position, speed and running direction of trains, and determines whether there is any risk according to the active protection decision algorithm.

"In such an instance, an alarm will be raised and emergency braking will be triggered automatically to prevent the train from rushing into derailment," said Xiao Xi, an electrical designer with CRRC Zhuzhou.

Different from traditional signal systems, the protection system based on BDS and high-precision maps greatly reduces costs and overcomes previous limits of train models.

The system has a higher positioning accuracy up to submeter level. Currently, more than 22 rail transit equipment enterprises in 10 provinces have been operating the system for three consecutive years to ensure the safety of train commissioning.

The multi-scene active train protection system is not the only application of BDS used by CRRC Zhuzhou. A remote monitoring and diagnosis system for trains is also facilitated by BDS technology. It can monitor the status of trains and improve fault maintenance efficiency.

This system has been connected to the data of 3,235 trains nationwide, providing technical support for their whole-life operational safety.

CRRC Zhuzhou has independently developed five types of rail transportation electronic products based on BDS application and introduced them to more than 20 cities both at home and abroad.

These products have been installed on over 5,000 sets of vehicles, covering urban railways, locomotives, high-speed trains, engineering vehicles and maglev vehicles.

China began to develop its own navigation satellite system in 1994. BDS-1 entered service and began providing positioning services in China at the end of 2000.

BDS-2 was completed in 2012, providing passive positioning services to the Asia-Pacific region. In 2020, BDS-3 was formally commissioned to provide satellite navigation services worldwide.

In 2022, the total value of China's satellite navigation and location-based service industry had exceeded 500 billion yuan (about 69.64 billion U.S. dollars).