Foreign Object Intrusion Detection on Metro Track Using Commodity WiFi Devices with the Fast Phase Calibration Algorithm

Abstract

With continuous development in the scales of cities, the role of the metro in urban transportation is becoming more and more important. When running at a high speed, the safety of the train in the tunnel is significantly affected by any foreign objects. To address this problem, we propose a foreign object intrusion detection method based on WiFi technology, which uses radio frequency (RF) signals to sense environmental changes and is suitable for lightless tunnel environments. Firstly, based on extensive experiments, the abnormal phase offset between the RF chains of the WiFi network card and its offset law was observed. Based on this observation, a fast phase calibration method is proposed. This method only needs the azimuth information between the transmitter and the receiver to calibrate the the phase offset rapidly through the compensation of the channel state information (CSI) data. The time complexity of the algorithm is lower than the existing algorithm. Secondly, a method combining the MUSIC algorithm and static clutter suppression is proposed. This method utilizes the incoherence of the dynamic reflection signal to improve the efficiency of foreign object detection and localization in the tunnel with a strong multipath effect. Finally, experiments were conducted using Intel 5300 NIC in the indoor environment that was close to the tunnel environment. The performance of the detection probability and localization accuracy of the proposed method is tested.