Cooperative Localization of Trains with Magnetic Field Measurements and Radio-based Ranging

Abstract

Magnetic field measurements provide Information about the absolute position along a railway track based on position-dependent distortions in the vicinity of the track. As another source of information, radio-based ranging provides information about the distance between two trains. This paper proposes a cooperative localization algorithm fusing magnetic field-based measurements from several trains and radio-based ranging between the trains. To evaluate the algorithm, magnetic field measurements from a diesel-electric train recorded on an 8.8 km long section of a high-speed railway line in central Germany are used. The ranging measurements for the Evaluation are simulated according to results from UWB ranging measurements in the railway environment. Results show an improved localization accuracy compared with the purely magnetic-field based individual localization of each train, i. e. the overall RMSE reduces from 1.41 m to 0.81 m. A particularly significant reduction of the localization error can be observed in cases where the error of the individual localization is large.