Survey of Collision Avoidance Systems for Underground Mines: Sensing Protocols

Abstract

With the growing number of unintentional interactions occurring in underground mines, Collision Avoidance System (CAS) establishment and maintenance has become an urgent need for mining industries to enhance their risk profile and improve construction safety. Usually, most collision accidents can be divided into three different categories in line with the involved participants and infrastructure condition. The accidents pose a great risk of financial cost to mining companies and even cause casualties. In detail, this paper presents an intensive study survey of positioning techniques, including ranging algorithms, to accommodate the demands of various proximity sensors and improve the capability of situational awareness. Then, we exploit the importance of the communication system, prevalent low-power wide-area technologies and related communication protocols. The effectiveness of communication systems decides and facilitates the success of the final integrated system that can be used to fundamentally address the problem of collision avoidance. For the purpose of collaboration between communication systems and other executive departments, a series of systematic comparisons of pertinent technologies and algorithms is given near the end, followed by a brief discussion on the best choice among these options. In the proposed solution, the overall end-to-end delay can be minimised to a few nanoseconds and the localisation accuracy can achieve centimetre level when operating in the range of 100 m.