For a technology to be successful in the mining industry, functionality and safety must take precedence over all else. This article details not only how a new

technology can offer greater capability and increase safety, but also how it can create an ease of use that requires less outside help – putting mine operators back in control of their maintenance, decreasing downtime and increasing productivity.

This case study is based upon the creation and implementation of a Mine Site Technologies (MST) BreadCrumb® mobile mesh wireless network operated by a leading diversified resources company, with operations spanning the globe.

Andrew Watkinson and Christine Hettinger, 

Mine Site Technologies, Australia, explain how a wireless mesh network 

is revolutionising communications across 

opencast mines.

A long-distAnce relAtionship

Reprinted from March 2012 | World Coal |

The events described here are not unique for this customer, but serve to illustrate how the BreadCrumb wireless network provides productivity and safety support under stringent mining applications.

Background and overview The company had been successfully managing its iron ore mine in Western Australia since 2003, but its increasing production objectives encouraged it to consider a fleet management system (FMS) to improve productivity and safety. In June 2008, the company’s

engineering manager attended the launch of MST’s opencast mining communications platform. He recognised that if this new technology lived up to the capability and performance MST was promising, it would be an ideal communications platform to partner with the FMS application the company was close to committing to.

MST was introducing a new type of mesh network. Its Layer 2 BreadCrumb mobile mesh technology promised to be much better suited to opencast mine operational conditions and an FMS

application than the mesh technology traditionally deployed (Layer 3) by other opencast mines.

The limits of Layer 3, “fixed” mesh networks, had been observed by another technical member of the company’s staff. This person had visited opencast mines and found the level of optimism was not high amongst mine operators when it came to the radio network. The radio network needed to be robust and reliable before an application could in turn be successful. Crucial to achieving effective operation of any FMS was real-time, seamless radio operation while the assets are mobile.

“Fixed” mesh networks, primarily Layer 3 technology, offered good performance for users in fixed locations. Examples of this include city-based office employees, where the mesh coped with their occasional change in location (seen by the mesh as changes in routes requiring updates to the routing table) when they took their laptops to meetings. Conversely, FMS nodes on heavy vehicles on opencast mines are, or should be, constantly moving – which is where Layer 2 mobile mesh technology is required.

Though a difficult technology to create, once achieved the BreadCrumbs’ Layer 2 mobile mesh technology enabled the successful wireless networking of mobile assets and their constantly changing routes. The BreadCrumb nodes mounted on the heavy vehicles provide a mobile mesh network that moves with the vehicles, reduces blind spots (by providing coverage within the pit, not just from above the pit), and increases area coverage and performance by providing hopping with low latency.

The “Instamesh” algorithm, by design, creates optimum meshing between moving nodes. While new to Australia, the BreadCrumb/Instamesh mobile mesh network had been raising the bar on expectations of operational opencast radio performance in the US for over a year. The company visited FMS suppliers and saw for itself a BreadCrumb-based radio network that had been operating to great

Figure 1. BC Commander screen shot of BreadCrumb infrastructure network.

Figure 2. BreadCrumbs mobile mesh showing the multiple connections (route choices).

| World Coal | Reprinted from March 2012

success, enabling the application to deliver the desired commercial benefits to the mine operator.

Moving forward Key to moving forward with the technology was to separate the contracts for the application and the network – such that each could be assessed independently. Agreements were negotiated with both suppliers (MST and Leica Geosystems).

The company also engaged SMP Mining Pty Ltd, which offered over 10 years of experience in FMS. SMP provided a project health check and review of the project plan, as well as technical troubleshooting assistance after rollout.

Very little is easy in mine operational communications, but a BreadCrumb network enables a simpler and more successful deployment, and also allows MST to train mine electricians to perform first-in maintenance. With this breakthrough capability, the previous need to get a specialist onsite for support is significantly reduced, putting mine operators back in control of their maintenance.

DeploymentIn August 2008, MST visited the mine and performed a site survey to determine the optimum network infrastructure design. A key benefit of MST’s mobile mesh is gained as the vehicles come in and out of line of sight (LOS). Here, the mobile performance allows vehicle data to successfully hop from one vehicle to the next to the infrastructure node to the wired LAN and FMS application and maintain performance (speed, bandwidth). The BreadCrumb network is a standard IEEE 802.11g Layer 2 mesh network supporting connection speeds up to 54 MB/s. Actual throughput depends on the distance between the nodes, antenna selection and other factors. An MST site survey and network design locates nodes and selects antennas based on the application(s) and the topography of the mine.

All BreadCrumbs are identical, and this allows simple and consistent installation and support.

Each network has at least two ingress points for redundancy and performance. Vehicle-mounted

BreadCrumbs are not just the wireless data link: critically, they are also the network node itself.

This means that wherever a vehicle is, if it is in LOS to another vehicle, which is in turn in the LOS of an infrastructure node, the first vehicle is connected to the application on the wired LAN and contributing the high performance of the mobile mesh network.

In January 2009 the four teams, consisting of the company’s personnel, as well as SMP, MST and Leica Geosystems installation personnel, commenced the installation of the wireless network equipment on 86 heavy vehicles, nine solar trailers and four buildings.

First the infrastructure part of the mesh was deployed, and the BreadCrumb management software, BC Commander, showed the first deployed mesh in Australia of a BreadCrumb infrastructure network (Figure 1).

By mid-April the installation of the BreadCrumbs mobile mesh network was completed. Figure 2 shows a screen shot of the first Australian mobile mesh network.

“Go live” arrived on schedule, in mid-May 2009, and found the network in good shape. BreadCrumbs mobile mesh network passed the week-long trial without a single radio “event” because according to the company, the radio network was “working just as MST said it would.”

SummaryThe next step is to leverage the BreadCrumbs open systems platform. Wireless VoIP trials are now taking place over the mobile mesh network to ease the burden on often overcrowded VHF radio channels.

Being a high bandwidth real-time WiFi compliant communications network, WiFi client services can be added to the network with ease and the choice of client products and prices is wide.

The BreadCrumb mobile mesh network has been working without fault since mid-April 2009.

Figure 3. Breadcrumb – one makes a node, two makes a link, three or more instantly creates a mobile mesh.

Reprinted from March 2012 | World Coal |