A ZigBee-based miner localization system

This paper introduces a new kind of mine personnel localization monitoring system. It is a kind of wireless sensor network based on ZigBee wireless communication technology. The system can fast achieve the miners´ real-time and accurate localization information about where the miners are underground mine tunnels and solve the positioning shortcomings of the traditional system such as RFID. The system mainly contains the ground monitoring host, industrial optical fiber Ethernet and underground mine wireless sensor network made up of gateway, reference nodes acting as routers and moving localization nodes. The underground miners are carried moving localization node sensor which is able to communicate with the neighbourhood reference nodes. Through the received signal strength indicator value (RSSI), the localization node takes advantage of its built-in location engine to calculate its localization coordinate based on location algorithm, and then via ZigBee network and industrial optical fiber Ethernet, transfer the coordinate information to ground monitoring host. Management personnel can monitor the localization of underground miners through the host at any time, and also manage underground miner´s attendance information as well as disaster relief.