combining the Neyman–Pearson structure and the Bayesia n appro-
ach is formulated.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes
the local detection problem and its solutions. The distributed frame-
work and its fusion rule are presented in Section 3. As an illustration
of practical applications, a distributed track occupancy detection
problem in a group with three segments is provided in Section 4.
Some performance comparisons between the global decision with
and without the dynamical thresholds and the fusion rule are also
discussed here. Conclusions are summarized in Section 5.
2. Local detection
Track occupancy detection is achieved by a set of track circuits.
For each track circuit, there is a transmitter and a receiver
equipped on both ends. An approximate sinusoidal signal is
propagated from the transmitter to the receiver continuously
along the track. A track segment can be regarded as a concatena-
tion of resistances R and inductances L (Zhao et al., 2009). Along
the track, several complementary capacitors CC are fixed, equally
spaced to neutralize the effect of inductances L. For each CC, there
exists a contact resistance CR linked to the track. The circuit
diagram of each track circuit is shown in Fig. 1 .
When there is a train on the track, signal propagation is shunted
by the front wheels of the train. Consequently, the receiving signal
decreases greatly. A relay is installed in the receiver to capture the
amplitude. If the receiving signal drops below a threshold, the relay
is triggered to activate a light corresponding to the current track on
the panel.
The curve of the receiving signal when the track is occupied can
be computed according to Zhao et al. (2009) and Zhao, Wu, and
Ran (2012). It is determined by the train position x on the track.
The receiving signal is denoted as U(x). Consider a typical track
circuit equipped with 16 complementary capacitors. When a train
passes through, the receiving signal is delineated in Fig. 2. While, if
the track is empty, the amplitude is a constant value.
As shown in Fig. 2, when a train passes through the track, the
receiving signal appears to be a position-related signal. Suppose
that the velocity is constant, then the sequential measurements
should be in accordance with such a curve except for an additive
noise. If the track is empty, the sequential measurements are iid.
Those are determined by a constant level plus a Gaussian noise.
Hence, there are two different modes to be distinguished.
2.1. Local detection formulation
The local detection is considered as a binary hypothesis testing
problem. H
0
means that the track is empty and H
1
means that the
track is occupied. A sliding window is applied here. In the sliding
window, there is a data block. For any two consecutive data blocks,
there is no overlap. Then the detection problem for segment i and
data block K is formulated as follows:
H
0
: y
i
k
¼Aþw
i
k
H
1
:
x
i
k
¼x
i
k 1
þvΔt
y
i
k
¼Uðx
i
k
Þþw
i
k
(
k ¼ðK 1ÞN; ðK 1ÞN þ1; …; KN 1 ð1Þ
where
i ¼1; …; n is the index of segments;
K ¼1; 2; … is the index of data blocks;
N is the size of the sliding window;
y
i
k
is the measurement of the receiving signal at time k in
segment i;
A is the receiving signal when the track is empty;
w
i
k
N ð0; s
2
Þ is the iid Gaussian noise at time k in segment i;
x
i
k
is the position of the train head at time k in segment i;
v is the velocity of the train, supposed to be constant;
Δt is the sample time; and
Uðx
i
k
Þ is the receiving signal when the track is occupied.
Remark 1. Suppose that for each track, the direction is well defined
and all the tracks are connected sequentially. For some special cases,
i.e., cross/branched sections, parallel/cyclic tracks, train route infor-
mation provided by the interlocking is used to sequence the tracks.
Then all the tracks, despite their topologies, are connected sequen-
tially in logical level.
Fig. 1. Circuit diagram of each track circuit.
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600
0.09
0.095
0.1
0.105
0.11
0.115
0.12
Position on the track (m)
Amplitude of voltage on the receiver (V)
Fig. 2. When the track is empty, the receiving signal is a constant value 0.6149 V,
otherwise a position-related signal.
M. Chang et al. / Control Engineering Practice 22 (2014) 69–80 71