A novel diagnostic system for adding reliability to communication networks in underground mines

A series of unfortunate worldwide mine disasters took place recently and shock the world, the disasters ranged from collapsed mines causing death to trapping miners underground which caused many life losses and injuries. The importance of robust and reliable underground communication networks has become evident once again. A reliable underground communication network in mines will not only facilitate the day- to-day operations but will also help save many lives. However, designing reliable and robust underground network has always been a challenge due to the special nature of mines. Until now, no single communication system exists that can solve all of the problems underground. As these extreme and harsh mine conditions require special communication systems like leaky feeders, Through The Earth (TTE), and wireless mesh networks. While TTE is used in case of disaster recovery to locate trapped miners and wireless mesh is used for sensing the mine conditions, the leaky feeder system can be considered the most popular communication system used for day-to-day operations. It is good for carrying voice, video, and data; however, the leaky feeder system is not reliable and problems are hard to diagnose. This paper describes a novel diagnostic system that enhances leaky feeders; this system will not only allow monitoring of all underground nodes connected to the leaky feeder. It will also allow remote programming from the control room above ground and monitoring the losses in the leaky feeder in the sense that the infrastructure will be able to monitor itself. The system is described here along with simulation results proving its performance.