A distributed location algorithm for underground miners based on rescue robot and coal-mining wireless sensor networks

Rescue robot places an important role when any severe disaster in underground coal mine happens. To locate and keep a track of miners working in a well becomes an impossible completed mission once the well communication infrastructure is all destroyed due to the disasters such as fire damp explosion. Wireless sensor networks, together with underground mine rescue robot provide a potential solution for the challenges in terms of many unique advantages of the wireless sensor networks like random deployments of nodes and network self-organized multi-hops. In this paper, a new coal-mining wireless sensor network (C-WSN) is developed. We propose a distributed system architecture and an improved location algorithm for rescue robot based on radio signal strength indicator (RSSI). The experimental results are analyzed. Finally, we draw conclusion and address the future work.