Mine Communications: Advancing Towards Automation

摘要

Whist mobile communications were adopted rapidly in open-cut mines, underground mines were for many years unable to share in the many advantages mobile communications offer. Radio has formed the backbone of mobile communications above ground for many years, but the same cannot be said of underground mines where radios typically only worked for a few hundred metres or as far as line-of-sight permitted. As such, underground mines were generally limited to fixed wire telephony. Even optic-fibre technology suffered from the same disadvantage of being a fixed network and vulnerable to damage in the robust underground environment.