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US 11,529,977 B1Granted
Radar enabled determination of presence, axle count, speed, and direction of a rail car
OwnerJohn Todd Elson, Michael George Melville +2inventors
InventorsJohn Todd Elson, Michael George Melville, Nicolas Martinez, Richard Skotnicki
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Abstract
The present invention comprises radar detection of rail car truck assembly features to determine the presence of a rail vehicle comprising a car, axle count of the vehicle, and the travel direction of and speed of a rail car.
Claims19
An apparatus comprising:
- at least one detector to detect each of the following:
- presence, axle count, direction, and speed of a rail car by a radar employing a chirp waveform and utilizing array antennas for transmit and receive paths;
- a radar sensor located between rails comprising array antennas and radar transceivers;
- wherein said radar transceivers use the frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) approach, wherein the FMCW employs a chirp, wherein said chirp comprises a signal whose frequency increases linearly over time during a chirp pulse, a master processor linking a radar device and providing control, storage, processing, and data transfer functions;
- and
- antenna arrays with a boresight angle pointed above the Earth's horizon.
3 more elements
A method for detection of presence, axle count, direction, and speed of a rail car by a radar comprising:
- installing a chirp radar device disposed between and below the top of the rails wherein wheel detection and axle counting are carried out by radar system-on-chip and the antennas, wherein all systems-on-chip link to a central processing unit that ties to a data extractor by data lines, wherein the radar system-on-chip comprises a high bandwidth radar comprising an advanced signal processing algorithm linked to multiple beams on antenna arrays.
A wheel detection system comprising:
- an antenna boresight pointing toward a rail and slightly above said rail;
- multiple antenna beams that allow discrimination between a rail car wheel and other rail car aspects;
- and
- a co-located antenna providing rail car speed and direction.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.