FPGA Self-Diagnosing and Testable Control Devices for Railway Switch Point

The authors solve the control devices synthesis problem for railway automation and remote-control devices. At the same time, the devices are endowed with the automatic fault detection properties and self-diagnosis, including pre-failure state control. As an example, a control device for a railway switch point mechanism is considered. As an element base for the implementation of the control device, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is used. The authors considered a solution that implies the finite state machines (FSM) with data from external systems using for technical diagnostics and monitoring in the process of developing a device when describing its operation. This linkage allows to endow the control device with the properties of self-diagnosis during operation. This does not affect the device safety and its operation in any way. Linking with the technical diagnostics and monitoring system increases the technical staff information content due to the timely generation of data on the occurrence of a control device pre-failure state. Even though we synthesized a device based on FPGA, the synthesis approach itself is universal and can be easily used with any element base. It should be noted that it is expedient to link directly with diagnostic equipment in the future, minimizing the amount of hardware used. The solution of this problem requires additional research.