A wireless IoT system for the monitoring of electric current in rail-transportation overhead contact lines

Overhead lines are subject to a lot of failures due to different causes leading to delays in rail traffic and high maintenance costs. The rise of IoT devices offers a lot of possibilities that could be used by the rail industry for monitoring purposes. In this scope, current measurements through a self-made IoT device have been investigated in this master thesis in collaboration with TUC Rail. The goal is to know the real current distribution between the wires in overhead lines. This could help improve the design of the catenary by optimising the current distribution. In order to make this possible, the constraints linked to the use of sensors in the catenary were studied. According to that, the choice was made to use Hall effect split core current sensors in combination with DC voltage sensors. Their data were collected with an STM32 NUCLEO board and transmitted through a LoRa communication. The performances of the sensors where tested in laboratory as well as the post-processing method needed to exploit the data. The whole measurement device was then tested at the Infrabel Academy where there is a catenary at men's height in order to validate the measurement device. The goal is to use this device in future experiments on an operating catenary.