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Railway irregularity measuring using Rauch–Tung–Striebel smoothed multi-sensors fusion system: quad-GNSS PPP, IMU, odometer, and track gauge

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Abstract

Precise track irregularity measuring is a pivotal technique to protect dynamic safety for railway transportation applications, especially those on high-speed railways. Current methods, such as the total station-based automatic inspection systems, commonly have a high cost and are inefficient. To reduce the costs and improve the measuring efficiency, a multi-sensors fusion system consisting of multi-constellation global navigation satellite systems (GNSS)-based precise point positioning, inertial navigation system, odometer, and track gauge is proposed and is further enhanced by using the Rauch–Tung–Striebel smoother. By using this system, one not only obtains high measuring accuracy, but also obtains increased efficiency of track irregularity measuring tens of times than achieved by conventional methods. After the principle investigations, a set of high-speed railway track measuring data containing quad-GNSS (GPS, BDS, GLONASS, and Galileo) observations, laser inertial measurement unit data, odometer measurements, and track gauge data are processed and analyzed to evaluate the capability of the proposed system. The results illustrate that the proposed system, which provided approximately 0.25, 0.59, 0.65, and 0.48 mm measuring accuracy in the super elevation, horizontal, vertical, and gauge components, respectively, can be used for high-accuracy track irregularity measuring.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to GNSS Research Center, Wuhan University, China for providing track irregularity experiment data and precise multi-GNSS orbit and clock products for this study. This work was supported partly by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41631072), National 973 Project of China (Grant Nos. 2013CB733301 and 2013CB733305), and National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFB0501804).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences Beijing, 29 Xueyuan Road, Beijing, 100083, China

    Zhouzheng Gao

  2. German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Zhouzheng Gao, Maorong Ge & Harald Schuh

  3. Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. N.W., Calgary, AB, Canada

    You Li

  4. School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Wenbin Shen

  5. GNSS Research Center, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Hongping Zhang

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  1. Zhouzheng Gao
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  2. Maorong Ge
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  3. You Li
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  4. Wenbin Shen
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  5. Hongping Zhang
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  6. Harald Schuh
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Correspondence to Zhouzheng Gao.

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Gao, Z., Ge, M., Li, Y. et al. Railway irregularity measuring using Rauch–Tung–Striebel smoothed multi-sensors fusion system: quad-GNSS PPP, IMU, odometer, and track gauge. GPS Solut 22, 36 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-018-0702-5

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