Distributed Collision Avoidance Based on Ad-Hoc Radio Communications

As radio systems become more reliable and cheaper, it becomes feasible to use ad-hoc radio communications as an extra layer of safety, to prevent crashes between trains in a light rail control system. In this paper, we look at physical tests of a modified ZigBee radio to determine the minimum reliable communication distances, and also a simulator based on the information provided by this radio system, to evaluate the performance of collision avoidance algorithms.