Smart Railway Level Crossing System for Avoiding Accidents

In railways, one of the foremost issue is the safety of railway level crossing. Crashes related to railway level crossing lead to a great loss with respect to goods and lives. However, the existing methods used for the accidents' avoidance are manual, sensors and cameras based which possess certain drawbacks. Manual control of crossing gates is not only time-consuming but requires human labor and generate errors. Besides, camera based control systems are costly, involve experts to process the images, require human intervention, and do not provide clear images in fog/rain. On the other hand, sensors based systems have short range issues and are dependent on environmental conditions. This paper reviews the existing control systems of railway infrastructure and their classification in different countries. It then presents an automatic, novel, high range and cost-effective approach to prevent critical accidents intelligently. The novel concept avoids level crossing accidents using Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The train GPS based on-board and track controller nodes communicate to control level crossing gates and alert road users. The communication between modules (i.e., on-board train and track devices) and remote database establishes using WiFi. The review of effective communication network for critical and non-critical communication is presented with respect to mobility, capacity, coverage, availability and reliability. This research provides concept which can greatly mitigate the accidents' frequency associated with the trains, pedestrians and road vehicles on crossing using smart technologies.