Autonomous vehicle railroad crossing warning system

An autonomous vehicle railroad crossing warning system for a plurality of components associated with at least one railroad crossing in the railroad crossing warning system, the components including vehicles and stationary objects, the railroad crossing warning system comprising:

• a plurality of controllers located in proximity to at least one railroad crossing, each controller operably associated with one of the plurality of components in the warning system and including a radio transceiver configured to utilize a single frequency time domain multiplexed (TDM) radio communication protocol, and
• a global positioning system (GPS) receiver configured to provide the radio transmitter with GPS clock synchronization to broadcast messages to at least some of the components in the warning system including at least one train traveling along a rail line through the at least one railroad crossing and at least one warning device located at the at least one railroad crossing,
• wherein each controller is configured to utilize data from a broadcast message of nearby components to autonomously construct an adaptive localized map representing at least a location of nearby stationary components of interest within the warning system for the controller associated with that component, and
• wherein the controller associated with the at least one train is configured to collect and propagate at least a portion of the adaptive localized map to any controller requiring updated data when the at least one train is within range of the radio transceiver of the controller.

An autonomous vehicle railroad crossing warning system comprising:

• a master controller that is stationary and located in proximity to at least one railroad crossing and includes a global positioning system (GPS) receiver,
• at least one slave controller without a global positioning system (GPS) receiver that is stationary and located in proximity to the at least one railroad crossing,
• at least one vehicle controller associated with a vehicle in proximity to the railroad crossing,
• at least one train controller associated with a train traveling along a rail line through the at least one railroad crossing, and
• at least one warning device located at the at least one railroad crossing;
• wherein each master controller, slave controller, vehicle controller, and train controller includes a radio transceiver that configured to utilize a single frequency time domain multiplexed (TDM) radio communication protocol;
• wherein the master controller is configured to provide the radio transmitter with GPS clock synchronization to broadcast calibration messages to the at least one slave controller;
• wherein the master controller and the at least one slave controller are deployed as a plurality of self-powered units each equipped to receive broadcast messages over the TDM radio communication protocol and configured to communicate with the at least one train controller, the at least one vehicle controllers, and the other units by a low power radio frequency (RF) channel;
• and
• wherein communications on the low power RF channel are synchronized by the master controller with periodic GPS time stamps such that no GPS operations are required by any slave controller.