Enabling condition based maintenance for railway fleets with Smart Data Logging

DB Cargo, a leading company in the European freight rail transportation business, chose Eurotech as their strategic partner for a smart data logging infrastructure for Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) application development. 

By combining its expertise in IoT architectures and embedded hardware subsystems for Transportation and Railway applications, Eurotech implemented an end-to-end architecture that provides the hardware and software components to enable Condition Based Maintenance on board (through Edge computing) and remotely (through its Cloud-based integration platform).

On-board Edge computers with Railway certifications

As on-board hardware, Eurotech offered the BoltGATE 20-25 MVB Edition, an Edge computer with IoT gateway capabilities designed and certified for railway IoT and Edge computing applications It ensures reliable performance in the harshest environments: it features a rugged enclosure and railway-certified connectors to resist difficult shock, vibrations and temperature conditions (the gateway is certified for EN50155 TX temperature class). 

Native support for Multifunction Vehicle Bus (MVB) protocol

The MVB Edition of the BoltGATE 20-25 adds integrated hardware and software components to interface with the train bus through two MVB ports on DB9 connectors. MVB options include EMD and ESD+ interfaces, both available in Read/Transmit or Read Only configurations.

A dedicated 32-bit MVB controller supporting all process data offloads the CPU and ensures accurate programmable sampling from 1024 down to 16 milliseconds for each individual port.

A Java/OSGi framework for Edge analytics and Condition Based Maintenance applications development

This is possible thanks to Everyware Software Framework, Eurotech's IoT Edge Framework based on Java/OSGi that provides field protocol libraries for MVB data acquisition, fitering, aggregation and logging. 

Thanks to the ESF Wires feature, the Edge framework provides a web-based development environment to easily manage and configure dataflows and data pipelines for analytics. It enables the creation of Condition Based Maintenance rules to develop and simulate application components, like counters and alerts, even offline.

Moreover, it provides Cloud connectivity management features to transfer the data collected in the field to Everyware Cloud, Eurotech's IoT Integration Platform. 

An IoT Integration Platform for OTA device management and integration with IT applications

Everyware Cloud (EC) was adopted by DB Cargo as an off-board Cloud platform to integrate the data collected in the field with the enterprise ground servers and IT applications. 

EC enables Over the Air (OTA) device management and secure connectivity through the popular MQTT protocol, providing a device and data management platform based on open standards. Field data are integrated with IT applications through dedicated APIs to enable maximum flexibility.