Underground Mining Monitoring and Communication Systems based on ZigBee and GIS

ZigBee as a wireless sensor network (WSN) was developed for underground mine monitoring and communication systems. The radio wave attenuations between ZigBee nodes were investigated to measure underground communication distances. Various sensor node arrangements of ZigBee topologies were evaluated. A system integration of a WSN-assisted GIS for underground mining monitoring and communication from a surface office was proposed. The controllable and uncontrollable parameters of underground environments were assessed to establish a reliable ZigBee network

Development of underground mine monitoring and communication system integrated ZigBee and GIS

An automated underground mine monitoring and communication system based on the integration of new technologies is introduced to promote safety and health, operational management and cost-effectiveness. The proposed system integration considering wireless sensor network (WSN) assisted geographic information system (GIS) enables to monitor and control underground mining applications from surface office. Based on the capabilities of WSNs, ZigBee network is adapted for near real-time monitoring, ventilation system control and emergency communication in underground mine. ZigBee nodes were developed to sense environmental attributes such as temperature, humidity and gases concentration; switching ON and OFF ventilation fans; and texting emergency messages. A trigger action plan for monitored attributes above normal and threshold value limits is programmed in the surface GIS management server. It is designed to turn the auxiliary fans on remotely or automatically in orange condition and sending evacuation messages for underground miners in unsafe (red) condition. Multi-users operation and 3D visualizations are other successful achievements of the proposed system for the underground monitoring and communication

Real Time Gas Monitoring System Using Wireless Sensor Network

Miner’s safety is the main issue in the present era. Miner’s health is affected by many means which includes unstable and cumbersome underground activities and awkward loads, heavy tools and equipment, exposure to toxic dust and chemicals, gas or dust explosions, improper use of explosives, gas intoxications, collapsing of mine structures, electrical burn, fires, flooding, rock falls from roofs and side walls workers stumbling/slipping/falling, or errors from malfunctioning or improperly used mining equipment. In earlier days for detection of gases canary and small animals are used but they didn’t provide the exact condition of the mines so safety in the mine in not guaranteed. Hence, there is a need of monitoring system which utilised the ZigBee wireless sensor network technology. There are two units of the monitoring system Sensor unit and Monitoring unit. Sensor unit will be placed in the underground section and Monitoring unit will be placed in the above the mines from where monitoring is done. Firstly, the Sensor unit is placed in the underground section of the mine. Where input is taken from the sensors in terms of Methane (CH4) i.e. MQ-2 sensor, Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) i.e. MQ-136 sensor, and Natural Gases i.e. MQ-5 sensor. Then they are compared with their threshold value by the Microcontroller Module and if the value is above the threshold value, the Buzzer starts ringing meanwhile data is displayed in the Display module and sent to the Wireless Communication Module of the Monitor unit i.e. ends device or coordinator through the Wireless Communication Module of the Sensor unit i.e. router. In this way, the study can help the miners get relief from any casualty and ultimately save their lives. The device encompasses a large range of networking. The data can also be stored for future investigation. The device is also durable and costs effective with a price of approx. Rs. 6,500 to 7,000/-

The optical sensor mote, a novel device for enabling next generation Wireless Sensor Networks

Recent advances in micro-electronics and communications have fuelled research in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). WSNs are a collection of low power, low cost, small form factor devices referred to as sensor motes interconnected in a random manner to establish a network. Despite wide ranging research into a range of applications, significant limitations stand in the way of utilizing WSNs to monitor large scale/area environments. Optical sensing techniques are well suited for monitoring a large variety of environmental variables such as temperature, pressure, humidity, and gas concentrations. However, traditional optical sensing techniques rely on bulky solutions including spectroscopic equipment and fibre based approaches. On the other hand, photonic crystals have caused a revolution in integrated optics as they allow functionalities not possible before; however little has been reported on their use as integrated optical sensors. The research work combines the diverse but related fields of WSNs, integrated optics, and Photonic Crystals. A novel platform, the optical sensor mote, is proposed and its key building blocks are experimentally demonstrated as a feasibility study. Specifically, multi-gas sensors based on the slow light phenomenon in photonic crystal waveguides are theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. These sensors can sense multiple gases without the need of any physical changes. They can also be integrated with electronics to yield an optical sensor mote of small form factor which is stable, multi-functional, and cost-effective. The optical sensor mote represents a significant step towards enabling the wide spread use of WSNs to monitor large scale/area environments and providing a highly integrated mote platform amenable to mass production and providing multi-functions.Recent advances in micro-electronics and communications have fuelled research in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). WSNs are a collection of low power, low cost, small form factor devices referred to as sensor motes interconnected in a random manner to establish a network. Despite wide ranging research into a range of applications, significant limitations stand in the way of utilizing WSNs to monitor large scale/area environments. Optical sensing techniques are well suited for monitoring a large variety of environmental variables such as temperature, pressure, humidity, and gas concentrations. However, traditional optical sensing techniques rely on bulky solutions including spectroscopic equipment and fibre based approaches. On the other hand, photonic crystals have caused a revolution in integrated optics as they allow functionalities not possible before; however little has been reported on their use as integrated optical sensors. The research work combines the diverse but related fields of WSNs, integrated optics, and Photonic Crystals. A novel platform, the optical sensor mote, is proposed and its key building blocks are experimentally demonstrated as a feasibility study. Specifically, multi-gas sensors based on the slow light phenomenon in photonic crystal waveguides are theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. These sensors can sense multiple gases without the need of any physical changes. They can also be integrated with electronics to yield an optical sensor mote of small form factor which is stable, multi-functional, and cost-effective. The optical sensor mote represents a significant step towards enabling the wide spread use of WSNs to monitor large scale/area environments and providing a highly integrated mote platform amenable to mass production and providing multi-functions

Mobile sink wireless underground sensor communication monitor

Mine disasters claim thousands of human lives and cause millions of property loss every year. The safety of the mine worker is of paramount importance in any underground environment. Advances in the development of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for monitoring infrastructure health, and environmental conditions provide end users with the benefit of low-cost installation, maintenance and scalability. This paper will investigate the challenges around a development of a real-time mine monitoring system using wireless sensor nodes to prevent mine disasters such as gas explosions or mine collapses. We propose a mobile, real-time gateway that will be able to process data collected from static wireless sensor nodes monitoring underground infrastructure, to prevent underground disasters

A Real-Time Monitoring System of Industry Carbon Monoxide Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

Carbon monoxide (CO) burns or explodes at over-standard concentration. Hence, in this paper, a Wifi-based, real-time monitoring of a CO system is proposed for application in the construction industry, in which a sensor measuring node is designed by low-frequency modulation method to acquire CO concentration reliably, and a digital filtering method is adopted for noise filtering. According to the triangulation, the Wifi network is constructed to transmit information and determine the position of nodes. The measured data are displayed on a computer or smart phone by a graphical interface. The experiment shows that the monitoring system obtains excellent accuracy and stability in long-term continuous monitoring

A survey on gas leakage source detection and boundary tracking with wireless sensor networks

Gas leakage source detection and boundary tracking of continuous objects have received a significant research attention in the academic as well as the industries due to the loss and damage caused by toxic gas leakage in large-scale petrochemical plants. With the advance and rapid adoption of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the last decades, source localization and boundary estimation have became the priority of research works. In addition, an accurate boundary estimation is a critical issue due to the fast movement, changing shape, and invisibility of the gas leakage compared with the other single object detections. We present various gas diffusion models used in the literature that offer the effective computational approaches to measure the gas concentrations in the large area. In this paper, we compare the continuous object localization and boundary detection schemes with respect to complexity, energy consumption, and estimation accuracy. Moreover, this paper presents the research directions for existing and future gas leakage source localization and boundary estimation schemes with WSNs

Joint transceiver design and power optimization for wireless sensor networks in underground mines

Avec les grands développements des technologies de communication sans fil, les réseaux de capteurs sans fil (WSN) ont attiré beaucoup d’attention dans le monde entier au cours de la dernière décennie. Les réseaux de capteurs sans fil sont maintenant utilisés pour a surveillance sanitaire, la gestion des catastrophes, la défense, les télécommunications, etc. De tels réseaux sont utilisés dans de nombreuses applications industrielles et commerciales comme la surveillance des processus industriels et de l’environnement, etc. Un réseau WSN est une collection de transducteurs spécialisés connus sous le nom de noeuds de capteurs avec une liaison de communication distribuée de manière aléatoire dans tous les emplacements pour surveiller les paramètres. Chaque noeud de capteur est équipé d’un transducteur, d’un processeur de signal, d’une unité d’alimentation et d’un émetteur-récepteur. Les WSN sont maintenant largement utilisés dans l’industrie minière souterraine pour surveiller certains paramètres environnementaux, comme la quantité de gaz, d’eau, la température, l’humidité, le niveau d’oxygène, de poussière, etc. Dans le cas de la surveillance de l’environnement, un WSN peut être remplacé de manière équivalente par un réseau à relais à entrées et sorties multiples (MIMO). Les réseaux de relais multisauts ont attiré un intérêt de recherche important ces derniers temps grâce à leur capacité à augmenter la portée de la couverture. La liaison de communication réseau d’une source vers une destination est mise en oeuvre en utilisant un schéma d’amplification/transmission (AF) ou de décodage/transfert (DF). Le relais AF reçoit des informations du relais précédent et amplifie simplement le signal reçu, puis il le transmet au relais suivant. D’autre part, le relais DF décode d’abord le signal reçu, puis il le transmet au relais suivant au deuxième étage s’il peut parfaitement décoder le signal entrant. En raison de la simplicité analytique, dans cette thèse, nous considérons le schéma de relais AF et les résultats de ce travail peuvent également être développés pour le relais DF. La conception d’un émetteur/récepteur pour le relais MIMO multisauts est très difficile. Car à l’étape de relais L, il y a 2L canaux possibles. Donc, pour un réseau à grande échelle, il n’est pas économique d’envoyer un signal par tous les liens possibles. Au lieu de cela, nous pouvons trouver le meilleur chemin de la source à la destination qui donne le rapport signal sur bruit (SNR) de bout en bout le plus élevé. Nous pouvons minimiser la fonction objectif d’erreur quadratique moyenne (MSE) ou de taux d’erreur binaire (BER) en envoyant le signal utilisant le chemin sélectionné. L’ensemble de relais dans le chemin reste actif et le reste des relais s’éteint, ce qui permet d’économiser de l’énergie afin d’améliorer la durée de vie du réseau. Le meilleur chemin de transmission de signal a été étudié dans la littérature pour un relais MIMO à deux bonds mais est plus complexe pour un ...With the great developments in wireless communication technologies, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained attention worldwide in the past decade and are now being used in health monitoring, disaster management, defense, telecommunications, etc. Such networks are used in many industrial and consumer applications such as industrial process and environment monitoring, among others. A WSN network is a collection of specialized transducers known as sensor nodes with a communication link distributed randomly in any locations to monitor environmental parameters such as water level, and temperature. Each sensor node is equipped with a transducer, a signal processor, a power unit, and a transceiver. WSNs are now being widely used in the underground mining industry to monitor environmental parameters, including the amount of gas, water, temperature, humidity, oxygen level, dust, etc. The WSN for environment monitoring can be equivalently replaced by a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay network. Multi-hop relay networks have attracted significant research interest in recent years for their capability in increasing the coverage range. The network communication link from a source to a destination is implemented using the amplify-and-forward (AF) or decode-and-forward (DF) schemes. The AF relay receives information from the previous relay and simply amplifies the received signal and then forwards it to the next relay. On the other hand, the DF relay first decodes the received signal and then forwards it to the next relay in the second stage if it can perfectly decode the incoming signal. For analytical simplicity, in this thesis, we consider the AF relaying scheme and the results of this work can also be developed for the DF relay. The transceiver design for multi-hop MIMO relay is very challenging. This is because at the L-th relay stage, there are 2L possible channels. So, for a large scale network, it is not economical to send the signal through all possible links. Instead, we can find the best path from source-to-destination that gives the highest end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We can minimize the mean square error (MSE) or bit error rate (BER) objective function by sending the signal using the selected path. The set of relay in the path remains active and the rest of the relays are turned off which can save power to enhance network life-time. The best path signal transmission has been carried out in the literature for 2-hop MIMO relay and for multiple relaying it becomes very complex. In the first part of this thesis, we propose an optimal best path finding algorithm at perfect channel state information (CSI). We consider a parallel multi-hop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) AF relay system where a linear minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receiver is used at the destination. We simplify the parallel network into equivalent series multi-hop MIMO relay link using best relaying, where the best relay ..

Real Time Monitoring System for Mine Safety Using Wireless Sensor Network (Multi-Gas Detector)

Today safety of miners is a major challenge. Miner’s health and life is vulnerable to several critical issues, which includes not only the working environment, but also the after effect of it. Mining activities release harmful and toxic gases in turn exposing the associated workers into the danger of survival. This puts a lot of pressure on the mining industry. To increase the productivity and reduce the cost of mining along with consideration of the safety of workers, an innovative approach is required. Miner’s health is in danger mainly because of the toxic gases which are very often released in underground mines. These gases cannot be detected easily by human senses. This thesis investigates the presence of toxic gases in critical regions and their effects on miners. A real time monitoring system using wireless sensor network, which includes multiple sensors, is developed. This system monitors surrounding environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity and multiple toxic gases. This system also provides an early warning, which will be helpful to all miners present inside the mine to save their life before any casualty occurs. The system uses Zigbee technology to establish wireless sensor network. It is wireless networking standard IEEE 802.15.4, which is suitable for operation in harsh environment