Detection and Compensation for Coded Odometer Errors Due to Train Wheel Slips and Slides

There might be wheel slips and slides when a train is moving. The coded odometer can be employed to measure the speed and the location of the train, which turns the linear speed of the wheel to the forward velocity of the train. Slips and slides make the two speeds different and measurement errors happen, which would be bigger and bigger over time. This paper summarizes several algorithms of identifying the wheel slips and slides such as comparing the measured accelerations with their upper bound, calculating the standard deviation of the accelerations, counting the residuals of the Kalman filtering, redundant sensors and so on. The paper also introduces a bunch of methods for compensating the errors, for example, using a fixed acceleration, interpolation and multiple sensors. Moreover, the detecting and compensating methods mentioned are simulated in Matlab with the actual experiment data and their effects of compensation are analyzed and compared at the end of this paper.