Personnel positioning at the Tuoketuo Compressor Station
I. Project Background
The Tuoketuo Compressor Station Boosting Project is a key component of China’s national energy strategy during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. As a core hub of the Shaanxi–Beijing natural gas pipeline network—a “nationwide integrated grid”—it plays a critical role in balancing supply and demand and ensuring reliable gas delivery to North China, serving both domestically produced gas and imported gas from Central Asia. Upon commissioning, the Shaanxi–Beijing pipeline’s daily throughput capacity will increase by 16 million cubic meters, with annual transport capacity exceeding 21.259 billion cubic meters, meeting the gas needs of over 300 million people across six provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan. This project holds significant strategic importance for safeguarding winter heating, industrial production, and residential gas supplies in North China.
As a high-pressure, high-risk, and highly technology-intensive energy infrastructure, compressor stations face the following operational and management challenges:
High safety risks: The facility includes high‑hazard areas such as the compressor building, natural gas pressure regulating station, and solvent storage area. Unauthorized entry, prolonged presence, or non‑compliant operations by personnel could trigger serious incidents, including explosions and leaks.
Inspection management is challenging: the station area exceeds 100,000 square meters and encompasses complex indoor and outdoor environments—such as compressor rooms, process pipe racks, and open-air tank farms—making traditional paper-based inspections prone to omissions and errors.
Slow emergency response: After an incident occurs, manually locating trapped individuals takes more than 15 minutes, increasing the risk of missing the critical golden rescue window.
Stringent compliance requirements: Must meet the mandatory provisions of the “Integrity Management Specification for Oil and Gas Transmission Pipelines” (GB 32167) regarding personnel positioning, electronic fencing, and trajectory tracing.
Low collaborative efficiency: Personnel from operations, maintenance, safety supervision, and other departments at the site have overlapping workflows, and the lack of a unified dispatch platform results in high management costs.
To address the aforementioned challenges, our company has developed a “Smart Compressor Station Personnel Positioning and Safety Management System” tailored to the Tuoketuo Compressor Station, leveraging an integrated indoor Bluetooth–outdoor BeiDou positioning technology. This system meets the station’s requirements for high safety, high reliability, and intelligent operations, enabling dynamic monitoring of all key elements—personnel, equipment, and the environment—and establishing a benchmark for intelligent safety management in the energy sector.
II. Technical Solution
1. System Architecture
Positioning Layer: An indoor Bluetooth–outdoor BeiDou integrated positioning network, covering the entire station area—including the compressor room, process pipe rack, open-air tank farm, office building, and more.
Transport Layer: A hybrid network comprising Bluetooth Beacons, Beidou receivers, and LoRa gateways, supporting low-power, high-concurrency data transmission;
Platform Layer: Independently developed the “Smart Compressor Station Safety Management Platform,” integrating GIS mapping, video surveillance, inspection management, emergency command, and other systems.
Application Layer: Offers dual-platform support for web and mobile, enabling collaborative workflows among multiple roles, including site administrators, security officers, and inspectors.
2. Hardware Deployment
Indoor Bluetooth Beacon:
Model: FY-BLE-E50 (Explosion-proof)
Deployment Strategy:
Compressor rooms and process pipe racks: deploy at 15–20-meter intervals, with denser spacing of 10 meters in critical areas (e.g., pressure-regulating valve groups).
Office building and control room: deployed at 30-meter intervals, with a total of 128 Beacons;
Technical specifications: Protection rating IP68, metal‑interference resistance improved by 50%, supports wide‑temperature operation from –40°C to +85°C, and meets explosion‑proof rating Ex d IIC T6.
Outdoor Beidou positioning terminal:
Model: FY-BD-T30 (Industrial Grade)
Deployment Strategy:
Open-air tank farm and plant roads: Beidou Beacons are deployed at key nodes along the inspection routes (such as tank valves and pipe rack interfaces), while other areas are monitored via Beidou satellite positioning.
Beacon density: One Beacon is deployed every 500 meters, for a total of 32 Beacons;
Technical specifications: Supports BeiDou-3 B1C/B2a dual-frequency positioning, with a positioning accuracy of ≤5 meters in open areas, and supports RTK differential positioning with an accuracy of ≤1 meter.
Smart Hat Card Locator:
Model: FY-BD-H10 (Employee Version / Visitor Version)
Features:
Integrated positioning: Automatically switches to Bluetooth-based indoor positioning, while activating BeiDou positioning outdoors; cross‑area handover time ≤ 2 seconds.
Safety and Protection: IP68-rated water and dust resistance, drop‑resistant from up to 3 meters, with a battery life of ≥60 days in low‑power mode.
Alert Function:
SOS One-Click Alarm: Press and hold for 3 seconds to initiate an emergency call, which will send your location to the central control room and security personnel.
Idle alert: If the device remains idle for more than 15 minutes (customizable), a Level 3 alert is triggered (hat card vibration → SMS push → Tel / Whatsapp notification);
Violation Alert: Automatically triggers alerts when behaviors such as not wearing a safety helmet or failing to carry a gas detector are detected.
Access Control: Employee cards enable access throughout the entire facility, while visitor cards can be configured with temporary access zones (e.g., office buildings, reception areas).
3. Positioning Technology
Indoor Bluetooth positioning:
Based on a Bluetooth RSSI fingerprint database and inertial navigation, combined with a 3D model of the station area, a positioning model is constructed, achieving an accuracy of ≤3 meters.
Supports multi-floor switching, automatically detecting floors via a barometric pressure sensor and changes in signal strength, with an accuracy of within one floor.
Outdoor BeiDou positioning:
By utilizing the BeiDou-3 B1C/B2a dual-frequency signals and integrating RTK differential positioning technology, positioning accuracy in open areas is achieved at ≤1 meter.
In areas where satellite signals are blocked (such as beneath utility tunnels), Beacon-assisted positioning achieves an accuracy of ≤5 meters.
Fusion Localization Algorithm:
Based on the Kalman filter and a weighted averaging algorithm, the system dynamically switches between Bluetooth and BeiDou positioning modes, ensuring seamless indoor–outdoor positioning without interruptions.
Supports offline caching of positioning data, enabling personnel trajectory recording even during network outages, with automatic upload upon restoration.
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