REMOTE ASSET TRACKING SYSTEM

500 feet below groundIn UCIL’s Narwa Mine

- An R & D Pilot Project

Commissioned on 31st March 2012

at

Narwapahar Uranium MinesUranium Corporation of India Limited

October 2012

ASSET TRACKING IN UNDERGROUND MINE - WHY

Fast track management of emergency situations by voice communication using IP phones.

Faster management of breakdowns to minimize downtime of various mine equipment.

Better monitoring of mine truck trips.

Generation of real time data for industrial engineering studies for better planning.

ASSET TRACKING IN UNDERGROUND MINE - WHY

Accessing of men and equipment in all locations of the mine by standard hardwired telephones is not possible

Fast track management of emergency situations by voice communication using IP phones

CONTROL ROOM

Introduction

This is an R & D project of UCIL in collaboration with M/S TCS.

The system has been installed at the 4th level (140 m below surface).

It has three components, viz.

Tracking of Vehicles & Key Personnel.

Voice Communication between Key Personnel.

Production Monitoring by Trip Counting.

System Capability

The system uses a Wi-Fi based tracking system for

real-time and historical tracking of

Underground Trackless Equipment.

Key Personnel.

Wireless voice communication between key personnel in Underground using IP Phones.

Wi-Fi Access Point

System Capability

The system uses RFID based tracking system for

Counting of number of trips of ore dumped at the Grizzly by different Mine Trucks.

Time Stamping of Dumping of Ore by Mine Trucks.

RFID Reader

RFID Antenna

RFID Antenna

Grizzly

System Components

A Control Room in underground.

A Wi-Fi network in underground.

An RFID network underground.

The system uses OFC cables for long distance data transmission.

Underground Control Room

It has the following installations

Server for storage and processing of time stamped data.

A graphic user interface showing

Location of mine equipment

Location of IP Phones (used by Key personnel)

It is connected through OFC cables with

Wi-Fi Access Points.

RFID Readers.

Wi-Fi Access Point

Underground Wi-Fi Network

It consisting of

‘Wi-Fi Access Points’ at various locations consisting of LIU (Light Interface Unit) Media Converter Wi-Fi Antenna near Access Points (Range = 75

m)

Wi-Fi tags mounted on mine equipment

IP Phones for voice communication

IP Phones

CHARGER

Wi-Fi Tag

Wi-Fi Tag

RFID Tag Wi-Fi

Tag

Underground RFID Network

It consisting of

An RFID Reader near grizzly at 4th level where Mine Trucks are unloaded.

A pair of RFID antenna (Range = 3.0 m)

To detect presence of mine truck in close

proximity.

To stamp mine truck unloading time.

RFID tags (passive) mounted on mine trucks

RFID Reader

RFID Antenna

RFID Antenna

RFID Tag

RFID Tag

RFID Tag

Wi-Fi Tag

System ComponentsA Wi-Fi network Wi-Fi would be primarily used for tracking of assets, voice

communication between key miners and the control room on zoned basis.Access Points: A wireless access

point (WAP) is a device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi WCS: Wireless Control System (WCS) includes tools for wireless LAN planning and design, location tracking, and wireless LAN systems configuration, monitoring, and management.MSE: Mobility Services Engine (MSE) is an appliance-based solution that supports a suite of software services to provide centralized and scalable service delivery.API: An application programming interface (API) is a specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other.Application Data Storage:SQL server 2008 is used as database in this solution.

System ComponentsAn RFID network Individual MT trip count data are gathered by RFID system.

RFID Reader: RFID readers use RF waves for communication and therefore must have one or more antennas. The antenna may be externally connected or in the same housing or enclosure as the RFID reader electronics. RFID Tag: The tag transmits information to the reader via antenna, and the reader converts the incoming radio waves into a form that can be read by a computer system. RFID middleware: RFID Middleware communicates with the device; filters redundant data in real time, logs the filtered data along with a time-stamp to a database .The logged data is utilized by the application to create reports of trip count for individual MTs.

Application Development Technology

The following table describes all the software details

used to develop the Remote Asset Tracking application.SL

NoSoftware Item Specification

1 Operating System Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

2 Database Software Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard

3 Development Software Microsoft visual studio 2010 using vb, asp.net

4 Documentation Software

Microsoft Office 2010

RFID Tag

Benefits from the System All these will help in

Fast track management of emergency situations by voice communication using IP phones.

Faster management of breakdowns to minimize downtime of various mine equipment.

Better monitoring of mine truck trips.

Generation of real time data for industrial engineering studies for better planning.

Thank you