Research on sensors-based pantograph monitoring system for high-speed trains

Interferences and noise in delayed fault isolation can cause catastrophic failures of the pantographs in high-speed railways. To address the above problems, this paper proposed a sensors-based pantograph monitoring system offering a novel solution for collecting power from pantographs. Moreover, the proposed technique employs capacitive voltage and resistive current sensors for real-time pantograph voltage and output monitoring. Furthermore, the method uses a low pass filter to cancel electromagnetic interference and is free from noise effects. The threshold-based algorithms used in the sensor-based pantograph monitoring system (SPMS) in this article allow for immediate overvoltage (0-25 kV) detection and overcurrent (0-1000 A) detection, and alarms are raised, ensuring no equipment damage and any service outage. The simulation results under various loads and faults indicate excellent robustness of the system, and a sampling rate ranges from 1 to 10 kHz for high-quality waveform reconstruction. The proposed SPMS is cost-effective and scalable and thus fills the gap between high-performance-only monitoring approaches and end-to-end deployment. The results of this study will promote the development of the pantograph monitoring technology with real-time diagnosis to improve the safety and reliability of high-speed railway systems.