Hybrid Technology Networking: A novel approach to transform the freight industry operations

Abstract:

The North American freight railroad industry is exploring possibilities of increasing the safety, security and reliability of their operations by deploying a real time monitoring and control network onboard freight trains. Traditionally, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been deployed for such operations. However, typical WSN protocols like ZigBee and commercial solutions utilizing it cannot address the unique requirements of railroad scenarios, primarily due to its limited transmission range and data transmission capabilities. To address this problem, we have proposed and designed a network protocol that utilizes WiFi technology alongside ZigBee. We call it Hybrid Technology Networking (HTN). WiFi has much superior transmission capabilities, especially in communication range and data throughput, compared to ZigBee. Hence, it aids in countering the problems associated with ZigBee-only networks. We have designed a protocol that specifies the guidelines of how these two different technologies work together to ensure a reliable and efficient data delivery network. Our protocol ensures complete adherence to the protocol standards of both ZigBee and WiFi, making system interoperability and large scale deployment a possibility. We have also designed hardware prototypes for HTN systems, and implement our protocol. The physical hardware will be used to test the efficacy of HTN in real-world settings. Furthermore, we have also designed a simulator based on the OPNET framework that allows us to test the protocol and its features in different scenarios relevant to railroad operations. In this paper, we present a summary of our work with the development and implementation of HTN. We also present some simulation results to show the benefits of HTN.