Internet of Things for Smart Railway: Feasibility and Applications

The explosively growing demand of Internet of Things (IoT) has rendered broadscale advancements in the fields across sensors, radio access, network, and hardware/software platforms for mass market applications. In spite of the recent advancements, limited coverage and battery for persistent connections of IoT devices still remains a critical impediment to practical service applications. In this paper, we introduces a cost-effective IoT solution consisting of device platform, gateway, IoT network, and platform server for smart railway infrastructure. Then, we evaluate and demonstrate the applicability through an in-depth case study related to IoT-based maintenance by implementing a proof of concept and performing experimental works. The IoT solution applied for the smart railway application makes it easy to grasp the condition information distributed over a wide railway area. To deduce the potential and feasibility, we propose the network architecture of IoT solution and evaluate the performance of the candidate radio access technologies for delivering IoT data in the aspects of power consumption and coverage by performing an intensive field test with system level implementations. Based on the observation of use cases in interdisciplinary approaches, we figure out the benefits that the IoT can bring.