Performance Enhancement of Virtual Coupling Distance Control Under Communication Impairments Using State Estimation

Kurzfassung

This paper investigates the impact of communication loss and relative sensing disturbances on gap control in virtually coupled train sets (VCTS), as well as the effectiveness of different state estimation methods in mitigating these effects. A simulation framework incorporating train dynamics, gap controller, sensor noise and stochastic communication/sensing drop outs is used for the evaluation. Two state estimation approaches- Zero-Order Hold (ZOH) and Kalman Filter (KF) based approaches are compared. The results show that KF based approach improves control smoothness, jerk and energy consumption, compared to ZOH. In terms of gap tracking the KF based approach only offers modest improvement compared to ZOH. These findings demonstrate that KF based approach generally improves the robustness of gap control. However, state estimation its own it is not sufficient for reliable performance,especially in extreme scenarios.