Che, songshan (Beijing Jiaotong University), Lu, Debiao (Beijing Jiaotong University), Cai, Baigen (Beijing Jiaotong University), Wang, Jian (Beijing Jiaotong University), Liu, Jiang (Beijing Jiaotong University), Jiang, Wei (Beijing Jiaotong University)

Cooperative Control of Subway Train Virtual Coupling with Input Saturation and Quantization

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "S33b-Intelligent Control for Next-Generation Railway Systems" (FR-EA-T33), Friday, November 21, 2025, 13:50−14:10, Southport 3

2025 IEEE 28th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), November 18-21, 2025, Gold Coast, Australia

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on October 18, 2025

Abstract

To tackle the performance bottlenecks and stability challenges faced by subway trains operating in virtual coupling under traction system saturation constraints and limited communication bandwidth, this paper proposes an adaptive cooperative backstepping control method that simultaneously compensates for the adverse effects of input saturation and quantization nonlinearities. First, the hyperbolic tangent function is used to smoothly approximate the subway train actuator saturation nonlinearities, resolving the differentiability issues associated with piecewise functions. Second, a hysteresis quantizer with memory characteristics is employed, and through a nonlinear decomposition approach, the quantization error is represented as the sum of gain deviations and bounded disturbances. Building on this, a distributed control law under dynamic topology is developed, combining backstepping techniques and Radial Basis Function Neural Networks for online estimation, with an adaptive mechanism compensating for the coupling effects of quantization and saturation. Finally, hardware-in-the-loop and simulation experimental results show that, under conditions of rapid acceleration and deceleration, the maximum position error is 1.07 m and the maximum velocity error is 0.63 m/s. With the adaptive control mechanism, the errors stabilize within 0.1 m and 0.06 m/s, validating the effectiveness of the proposed method.