AtomTRAIN: Atom-based Transportation Resilience with Atom Interferometer Navigation

量子传感技术提供的测量精度、准确度和稳定性超过了经典(或非量子)方法所提供的水平。这种性能增强显示出巨大潜力的一个领域是定位、导航和定时(PNT)系统。PNT系统的一个重要子类是基于惯性导航系统的PNT系统。它们基于对加速度、旋转和时间的连续测量，计算从已知起点开始的相对位置。在卫星导航系统不可用的环境中，例如在地下或水下，或者当卫星导航系统被主动拒绝时，这种系统是必不可少的。目前，这类系统的长期定位精度受到它们使用的经典加速度和旋转传感器性能的严重限制，即使是在最先进的化身中也是如此。基于超冷原子原子干涉测量的旋转和加速度传感器的性能使这类经典惯性导航系统的长期定位精度至少提高了一个数量级。尽管有这种潜力，但目前还没有商业上可用的惯性测量装置来提供冷原子加速和旋转传感的好处。我们的项目将通过交付商业上可行的演示系统来改变这一点，该系统在火车导航中提供量子增强的定位能力。在列车上部署量子IMU旨在提高定位精度和精度，并为当前最先进的系统提供额外的弹性和冗余。这可能有几个好处，包括减少延误和取消，增加特定轨道段上的列车交通密度，以及降低维护和升级现有信号系统的成本。

Quantum sensing technologies offer levels of measurement precision, accuracy and stability that exceed those offered by classical (or non-quantum) approaches. An area where this performance enhancement shows great potential is in positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems. An important subcategory of PNT systems are ones based on inertial navigation systems. These calculate a relative position from a known starting point based on continuous measurements of acceleration, rotation and time. Such systems are essential in environments where satellite navigation systems are either unavailable, such as when underground or underwater, or when they are actively denied. Currently, the long-term positioning accuracy of such systems is severely limited by the performance of the classical acceleration and rotation sensors that they use, even in state-of-the-art incarnations. The performance of rotation and acceleration sensors based on atom interferometry with ultra-cold atoms offer at least an order of magnitude improvement on the long-term positioning accuracy of such classical inertial navigation systems. Despite this potential, there are currently no commercially available inertial measurement units that deliver the benefits of cold atom acceleration and rotation sensing. Our project will change this through the delivery of a commercially viable demonstrator system that offers quantum-enhanced positioning capability in the navigation of trains. Deploying quantum-IMUs on trains is intended to increase both positioning accuracy and precision, and also offering an extra layer of resilience and redundancy to current state-of-the-art systems. This could have several benefits, including the reduction in delays and cancellations, increasing the density of train traffic on a given section of track, and also reduced costs of maintaining and upgrading current signalling systems.