Smart low power wireless sensor network for underground mine environment monitoring

Abstract

Underground mines are more hazardous in nature and contain unsafe zones for their workers. There is the need to develop an effective, secure, reliable and low cost surveillance and safety system in underground mines. This paper presents a low cost, low power mobile wireless underground mine environment monitoring system, developed by using the ZigBee protocols based wireless data transfer system. The system includes a small board integrating all sensors designed for monitoring the underground environment. Suitable firmware is developed for secure and reliable wireless data transfer from the sensor network. Data, transferred through routers and coordinator is received by data management & acquisition software, developed for the purpose. This helps in displaying the real-time data in tabular and graphical forms as well as for alarm generation in case of exceeding the limits. The whole system is tested in a model mine successfully.