White Papers

• An Empirical Link- Quality Analysis for Wireless Snesor Networks

  Tags: White Papers

  Have you read Wisam Farjow latest White paper?

  In recent years, wireless sensor networks have attracted significant attention due to their integration of wireless, computer, and sensor technology. Wireless Sensor networks consist of number of nodes that are equipped with processing, communicating and sensing capabilities. They use ad-hoc radio protocols to forward data in a multi-hop mode of operation [1].

  Despite concerns of limited reliability, mining industry have started to utilize sensors with IEEE 802.15.4 radios before the release of industrial grade wireless sensor solutions.

  In mining industry, sensor networks can provide prompt response to identification of workers entering or leaving a mine, control personnel traffic into hazardous areas to provide warning indication signals, identification of vehicles entering or leaving production areas or passing specific locations in the mine, tracking of supplies and materials, reducing the fatal accidents due to collision, monitoring of underground gases, and maintenance scheduling. The general objectives can be summarized a as follows [2]:

  • Real time monitoring of gases and other parameters
  • Monitoring equipment locations and operation statuses to improve productivity and reduce fatal collision accident;
  • Locating and tracking miners in case of disaster for emergency rescue operations.
  • Tracking and monitoring assets equipment
  • Monitoring miner’s unsafe practices and warning;

  Generally speaking, the measurement of physical parameters makes the sensors most suitable technology for monitoring and reporting important quantifiable measurements. Sensors though are not just limited to environment sensing. Any application involving sensing of physical parameters like sound, humidity, pressure, temperature, etc, might use sensor network [3], [4].

  When choosing deployment of WSN in underground mine, it should be necessary to make a compromise between conflicting requirements. The priority is to insure a robust global network with battery-operated nodes. Therefore, these types of networks are usually developed with the following goals in mind. Firstly, the nodes must be able to communicate with other nodes via a highly reliable radio module that is compatible with the communication protocol of the network, such as ,IEEE 802.15.4 standard in our case. Secondly, the network should be robust to monitor the required measurements, such as temperature for long time.

  The purpose of this paper is to use a series of field measurement methods to characterize the channel radio and on and link quality Assessment of ZigBee-based sensor networks in mining galleries. Only a few wireless sensor studies have been carried out in the exact settings of mining galleries.

  Although a part of this study was published earlier in this paper we present other important analysis to understanding the characteristics of a communication link for sensor networks in this underground mines is presented in this work.[4],[5].

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• Support Vector Machines for Indoor Sensor Localization

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  With the rapid advances in wireless communication and portable devices technologies, the need for smart applications that could offer personalized services to the mobile users has attracted a lot of research interest in the past few years. This interest has led to the development of a range of services called “Location Based Services”. Location based services are aimed at making use of geospatial location information as well as user context in order to provide the end-user with useful personalised information. Several usage trends have been observed in location based services among which emergency services, information services and tracking services where the most general [1].

  The accurate localization of objects and people in indoor environments has long been considered an important building block for ubiquitous computing applications [2], [3].

  Most research of indoor localization systems has been based on the use of short-range signals, such as Wi-Fi [4], [5] Bluetooth [6], ultrasound [7], infrared [8], or RFID [9].

  This works presents an accurate ZigBee-based indoor localization system in underground mine. Our system can be deployed on underground mines gallery equipped with a wireless sensor network. The system uses the fingerprinting technique to associate position dependent information such as the strength of the received signal with a location.

  The key idea that makes accurate ZigBee-based indoor localization possible is the use of two signal-strength fingerprints. We present an efficient algorithm based on support vector machines (SVM) technique for classification.

  The proposed algorithm is practical and scalable. The choice of this point is motivated by the high performance of SVM.  We evaluate our ZigBee-based indoor localization system in real underground mines. Experimental results show that the system achieves a good accuracy.

  The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II contains the related work. Then, in Section III, we will present the measurements and fingerprinting data collection and simulation. We give a system description and theoretical analysis of support vector machine. Section V provides performance evaluation of the algorithm in.

   

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• Post-Disaster, Underground Communications

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  Post-Disaster, Underground Communication

  There is a wide array of equipment currently employed in tunnels and mines, to allow underground personnel to talk to each other and to the surface. This includes:

  
  Wired Equipment

  • Telephones
  • Public Address
  • Loudspeaker

  Fibre-optic Equipment

  • Ethernet VoIP
  • Multiplexed Baseband Audio

  RF Equipment

  • Distributed Antenna
  • Leaky Feeder
  • Node (Mesh)

  These technologies all have their benefits and find use in different applications. However, they all have one major weakness, their method of communicating with the surface.

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• DESIGN OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK FOR MINE SAFETY MONITORING

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  The recent emergence of the sensor networks technology is significantly impacting the capabilities for automated distributed monitoring of environments. The low manufacturing cost of sensors, increased coverage and accuracy in distributed sensing due to their large deployments and their ability to operate in inhospitable terrains has made them an amenable technology for various surveillance and monitoring applications In this paper we evaluate the performance of wireless sensor network technology for underground mine’s safety monitoring. The system is mainly composed of static ZigBee nodes, which are deployed on the underground mine galleries for measuring underground mine parameters such as ambient temperature, fire detection, humidity, level of carbon monoxides etc. The main characteristic of the networks such as the throughput, the received data rate, latency have been evaluated.

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• Wireless Sensor Networks in Underground Mines

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  WSN in the Underground Mine

  Following tragic events in many underground mines such as those at the Darby, Alma and Sago coal mines, the need for reliable communications systems in underground mines became evident. These incidents triggered the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act of 2006 in the United States. The most important aspect of the MINER Act is providing reliable communication for miners before and after tragic incidents. Reliable communication has always been a challenge in underground mines due to changing topologies and the harsh environment. In addition, disasters disable electricity and communications cables, block tunnels and cause fire. These may damage the communication infrastructure which hampers rescue efforts and endangering lives. Therefore, durable wireless solutions using advanced communication and sensor network technologies have been investigated to provide reliable communications in underground mines.

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• Genuine P25 Interoperability for Public Safety Agencies

  Tags: Case Studies, White Papers

  Genuine P25 Interoperabilty for Public Safety Agencies:  Tait Rado Case Study

  Tips to Maxmize your Investment and Aviod Pitfalls.

   

   

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