Feasibility of seismic wave communication using electromagnetic vibrator under strong environmental noise interference: Field experimental research

Abstract

Although various wired or wireless communication facilities play a significant role in underground mine production monitoring and disaster warning, some communication nodes will be damaged when an accident occurs, resulting in unreliable emergency communications. Due to the excellent transmission characteristics of seismic waves in the earth channel, there is no need for the seismic wave communication system to set up relay nodes. Since seismic waves are not easily disturbed by the external environment, they can be used as a new type of emergency communication carrier to realize information transmission. However, under strong background noise interference in a real environment, the feasibility of seismic wave communication using an electromagnetic vibrator is not yet known. Therefore, a field experiment research on electromagnetic vibrator seismic wave communication was conducted. First, the model of electromagnetic vibrator seismic wave communication was established. In addition, the on–off keying modulation method, the cross-correlation segment threshold demodulation method, and the noise suppression method based on the time–frequency characteristics of the carrier were introduced. Finally, an electromagnetic vibrator seismic wave communication system was built, and binary data communication up to 72 m without deploying additional relay nodes was achieved successfully. The experimental results illustrate the feasibility of the electromagnetic vibrator seismic wave communication under strong background noise interference in a real environment. Furthermore, combined with the characteristics of the seismic wave, the time–frequency slice filtering can significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the seismic wave and can further increase the communication distance with respect to the traditional methods.