Application Of Bluetooth Technology To Railway Systems

We are studying application of Bluetooth(TM) technology to railway systems. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless telecommunications technology to connect mobile phones, personal computers and their peripheral devices. One application is the CyberNavi system for passenger guidance. In this system, the handy terminal of passengers receives the location data transmitted by fixed Bluetooth stations which are located at appropriate spots at stations such as platforms, and provides location-dependent guidance to the owner of the terminal. Examples of the guidance are navigation for changing trains, and suggesting of alternative routes at accident. Another is a system to support train drivers and collect data of train. This system consists of handy terminals for drivers, host computers at operational offices and on-board devices, all of which have a Bluetooth interface. When a roll call is taken place at the operational office, the duty data for the driver are transferred from the host computer to the handy terminal via Bluetooth. In the train, the handy terminal transmits the timetable to an on-board display and receives the fault history data of the train from an on-board monitoring controller via Bluetooth. If there is a mobile phone with a Bluetooth interface in the cab, the driver can perform hands-free speech communication by using a headset with a Bluetooth interface, and the timetable in the handy terminal can be updated on a real time basis from the operational office. As the diagnostic data stored in the handy terminal are carried to the operational office with the driver, cost reduction for telecommunications and mass data transmission can be achieved. We verified the feasibility of these systems with prototype versions in which we implemented some required functions. We also measured the transmission characteristics of Bluetooth in the vicinity of a locomotive.