Technical Overview

EBITrack 400 receivers are monitored by collecting data from their diagnostic link, which reports the status of the device once per second. Several items are reported back, each of which are recorded in a Centrix channel. The following channels are of particular interest for RCM:

• IAVE: The average in-frequencey-band current. This should be high while the track section is clear and effectively zero when the track section is occupied. Many classes will affect the IAVE measurement, appearing as unexpected peaks or generally elevated current while a track section is occupied.

• ITOT: The total current seen by the receiver (including in-frequency-band current). Excessive ITOT current can indicate fault conditions relating to traction current, failing tuning circuits and so on.

• ITHR: The threshold current for this device. When IAVE drops below ITHR, the device reports the track section as occupied and vice versa.

• ERR: This channel reports any fault code emitted by the device

Centrix analyses each track occupation to find anomalous track current (IAVE) measurements. When an anomalous occupation is detected, it is assigned a tag depending on the type of anomaly, and the health score for the device is dropped accordingly. A series of anomalous occupations will result in a 0% health score, indicating the track section requires immediate maintenance. The types of tags which can be applied to occupations are described below

Tag Types

TC_HIGH_CURRENT: Applied to occupations with generalised high occupation current.

TC_UNSTABLE_OCCUPATION_CURRENT: Applied to occupations with unstable occupation current (i.e. with unusual peaks or spikes mid occupation).

TC_SHORT_OCCUPATION: Applied to (apparent) occupations which are very short i.e. track flicks.

TC_LONG_OCCUPATION: Applied to (apparent) occupations which are very long.

TC_POOR_DATA: Applied to occupations where the quality of data is poor - can be due to datalogger misconfiguration.

The rules which are used to decide how these tags are applied can be adjusted from their defaults in the edit asset page (see below).

Health Score

A health score (between 0% and 100%) is assigned to the asset each time an occupation is observed. The health score is based on the proportion and type of tag applied to recent occupations. As a rule of thumb, if more than 20% of occupations are anomalous the health score will drop below 50%, indicating a maintenance intervention should be scheduled.

Creating or editing an asset

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These asset parameters can be tweaked used to adjust the behaviour of the occupation labelling system and the health score calculation.

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The channel fields shown above are used to map Centrix channels to datalogger channels. The names of the datalogger channels and Centrix channels should generally match

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As shown above, asset-to-asset relations can be defined, for example linking adjacent track sections, points and crossings. The latitude and longitude of the asset can also be defined. At a future date, these parameters will be used to evaluate the impact of weather/environment on the asset and associate the performance of adjacent/joined assets.

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