Mine Internet of Things (MIoT) has been intensively discussed in recent years. Positioning technology is the key for some MIoT applications, especially in underground mining environments for ensuring the safety of mine workers. It is also a critical technological capability in resolving mine productivity bottlenecks, which has a great economic impact in Australia. Australia is one of the worlds largest mining nations and a significant player in mining-related research and development. To support the growth of the mining sector, innovative technologies need to be developed, with underground positioning technology an important though significant engineering challenge. Once the position of the mobile station (person or asset) is estimated, the location information should be sent to the control centre on the surface. A wireless communication method combined with the existing backbone communication network can be used. However, there is still no low cost, high efficient solution to solve this problem. In this paper, we briefly introduce a positioning and communication system developed at the University of New South Wales for the underground mining environment.
CITATION: Li, B, Zhao, K and Saydam, S, 2019. A cost-effective positioning and communication technology for the underground mine IoT application, in Proceedings Future Mining 2019, pp 134136 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).