Localisation of mobile underground mining equipment using wireless Ethernet

This review paper explores the use of IEEE 802.11b wireless Ethernet for the localisation of mobile equipment operating in an underground coal mining environment wireless communication networks have recently been introduced with some success in underground operations such as longwall mining to provide reliable high-speed communications for monitoring and control. We investigate the feasibility of this wireless paradigm for providing a new machine localisation capability underground, as has been recently considered in other non-mining domains. We overview two popular location estimation techniques, namely nearest-neighbour and Monte-Carlo Localisation, which use only the signal strength as received from several wireless access points to estimate location. Because the received signal strength is a highly variable parameter in underground environments, real data experiments are conducted using an in-house test facility to investigate signal properties and to evaluate the potential of the concept for underground mining.