Railcar monitoring system based on BLE and LoRaWAN

Abstract

The architecture of a railway rolling stock monitoring system using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and LoRaWAN technologies is proposed. The aim of the development is to increase the efficiency of accounting and control of wagons by digitalizing the process. The method is to equip each car with a compact BLE beacon that transmits an identifier and telemetry, and collect these signals using LoRaWAN-enabled gateways. The key elements of the architecture are BLE beacons on wagons and stationary BLE/LoRaWAN gateways forming a multi-level star-within-a-star network. The expected advantages of the system are energy efficiency (long–term operation of beacons from a battery), a wide coverage area thanks to LoRaWAN, automated data collection in close to real time, a reduction in the proportion of manual labor and improved accuracy of operational monitoring of the location of wagons.