Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, Using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is clearly written. The scientific soundness and novelty are high. The only problem is that the figures and screenshots are blurry: Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 6. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewers for the Article with title:

Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things, in journal MDPI Processes

We sincerely thank you for the constructive criticism and suggestions for our Article: Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things.

Thank you for the time and effort that you have devoted to analyzing the content of our article and providing us with significant and constructive comments.  We are glad that you have found our manuscript interesting.

We have rebuilt some paragraphs so that the readers could fully take advantage of the topics included in our paper.  We have clearly stated what we have reached after analyzing the experimental results and the theoretical background and related works connected to this topic. 

We have used some of the lines from the original version of Section Summary. However, we have changed their order significantly and expanded the section with new conclusions. For that reason, the whole changes have been highlighted in yellow color or Track Changes.

According to your suggestion, we have focused on the linguistic corrections and the improvement of the English vocabulary used. We believe that this leads to a better overall reception of the article.

Please find below a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments. For clarity, we repeated the reviewers’ comments and the authors’ responses under each comment in bold. We would be pleased to give any further information that you might request.

Sincerely,

Prof. Oana GEMAN (on behalf of the authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a system used to transmit to a web-server the status and operating information of an electric or diesel train.

• First of all, the authors should much more clearly explain what their contribution is. For what I understand, the authors have created and tested a web-server application to transmit the data in real time from a set of trains. The FERODATA system is supposed to be a commercial one? Or have the authors also created all this system? What about the sensors? From my understanding they are included in the trains so the authors' work is mainly the communication part and the web-server application. I am no saying it is not a good work, I am just saying that the contribution and actual work is not clear enough in the description. For instance, the authors refer in the introduction and the conclusions to an efficient convertor of the rotating movement of the wheel in electrical energy. A reader must be careful because it can be understood that this work is done in this paper (but it has nothing to do...). So please, state clearly what you haev and have not done.
• Remove the comma from the title
• Abstract should not contain details such as the reference "wagon_POS_n", it makes no sense to include this in the Abstract. 
• Figures have a very bad quality (specially Fig. 1, the right block cannot be read).
• I would reorganise the paper by placing the system architecture before the description of the server application.
• The Ferodata BOX and Mobile, are they developed by the authors? Clarify. Just for curiosity, why are they called GS_Dev1 and GS_Dev2?
• English MUST be proofread, a lot of sentences are wronly written.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers for the Article with title:

Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things, in journal MDPI Processes

We sincerely thank you for the constructive criticism and suggestions for our Article: Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things.

Thank you for the time and effort that you have devoted to analyzing the content of our article and providing us with significant and constructive comments.  We are glad that you have found our manuscript interesting.

We have rebuilt some paragraphs so that the readers could fully take advantage of the topics included in our paper.  We have clearly stated what we have reached after analyzing the experimental results and the theoretical background and related works connected to this topic. 

We have used some of the lines from the original version of Section Summary. However, we have changed their order significantly and expanded the section with new conclusions. For that reason, the whole changes have been highlighted in yellow color or Track Changes.

According to your suggestion, we have focused on the linguistic corrections and the improvement of the English vocabulary used. We believe that this leads to a better overall reception of the article.

Please find below a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments. For clarity, we repeated the reviewers’ comments and the authors’ responses under each comment in bold. We would be pleased to give any further information that you might request.

Sincerely,

Prof. Oana GEMAN (on behalf of the authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the authors have addressed the majority of my comments in the previous report, in my opinion there are still some revisions to be done prior to the publication of this work:

• English should be further improved. For instance, in the Abstract it says: ''is presented a system consisting of three components'', which should be corrected to ''IT is presented...'' or ''A system consisting of three components is presented''
• I can understand that figures are blurred for confidentiality. But for instance, in Fig. 2 some hidden word symbols can be seen (¶), which does not look very professional.
• Authors did not respond to my question Q3 rgearding the development of the convertor, or at least their answer is not clear to me: 'Q3. For instance, the authors refer in the introduction and the conclusions to an efficient convertor of the rotating movement of the wheel in electrical energy. A reader must be careful because it can be understood that this work is done in this paper (but it has nothing to do...). So please, state clearly what you have and have not done.''
• Figure 6 is missing in the revised version
• The portion of code in page 10 does not look good in a paper. Instead, the authors could insert a flow diagram to show software components. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer for the Article with title:

Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things, in journal MDPI Processes

We sincerely thank you for the constructive criticism and suggestions for our Article: Active Control Parameters Monitoring for Freight Trains, using Wireless Sensor Network Platform and Internet of Things.

Please find below a point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.

We would be pleased to give any further information that you might request. Thank you again for your effort to prepare the final version of our paper!

Sincerely,

Prof. Oana GEMAN (on behalf of the authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf