Design of wireless sensor network for mine safety monitoring

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.