Going wireless underground: networking research promotes worker safety.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: HEALTH & SAFETY

The safety of workers in underground mining operations stands to improve through new wireless infrastructure technology being developed by Sudbury-based Symboticware Incorporated.

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In conjunction with local post-secondary institutions and experts from around the world, Symboticware is working to build stronger and broader connectivity in these harsh environments.

Through its Open Sensor Network project, the company is hoping those who work in and run mines will have much more timely communication of crucial information, whether it's engine levels or air flow, contaminant levels or air temperature.

"It's not about replacing infrastructure, but adding onto it," says Bora Ugurgel, marketing and sales manager for Symboticware.

"What we found is that in new drifts, there's no (network) communication, so this might be a way around it."

Still in the design phase, this project is based on the company's Sym-Bot platform, a small rugged industrial computer that collects data from mobile mining equipment. That data is transmitted whenever the vehicle passes through the mine's wireless network.

However, there are many areas in underground mines where the wireless network doesn't reach, such as where new development is taking place, and it can take time for a vehicle to reach a hotspot. Similarly, Symbot portable air monitoring stations are often used far from such hotspots, and require manual data collection.

To resolve these issues, Symboticware is looking to use small, inexpensive radio tags to extend the wireless network, laying them out from the wireless-capable areas through to the "dead zones."

Though this provides lower bandwidth than actual wireless hotspots, it allows for alerts or crucial information related to safety, maintenance, or operational efficiency to be transmitted between mine staff.

"You might be in. the working area, and there's some alert you want to be able to send through and not have that huge delay to get to the (wireless) hotspot," says Lorrie Fava, Symbotic-ware's manager of research and development. "That's where this comes in."

The tag system will also have the ability to re-organize itself, meaning that if one tag in the wireless networking chain is damaged or falls, others will pick up the' virtual slack.

Applied research on this technology is being done with $100,000 from the Ottawa-based Precarn Incorporated, a non-profit organization supporting pre-commercial development of leading-edge...