A Survey of Train Positioning Solutions

Positioning accurately and safely a train is nowadays a great challenge. That includes currently available railway sensors and new candidate sensors for data fusion. Global Navigation Satellite System and Inertial Measurement Unit sensors arise as prominent technologies to incorporate in railways. Although satellite-based train localization tests can be found in the scientific literature, there are no common criteria to evaluate the performance of the positioning achieved. In this paper, a series of criteria is defined and justified in order to be able to evaluate the most recent and relevant works related to train positioning. The results of this comparative analysis are gathered in tables, where the criteria defined are applied to the works compiled. According to the results obtained, a research gap in safety related applications is found. It is concluded that the economic viability of given solutions should be explored, so as to design an on-board train-integrated positioning system.