An Underground Radio to Save Lives 82
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Duluth News Tribune wrote last week about a communication device which could be a lifesaver for miners. This invention is the brainchild of David Reagor, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). His prototype radio works at depths of 500 feet and is based on very low frequency electromagnetic radiation and digital signal processors. A commercial version is in the works and could be used not only by workers trapped in a mine, but also by firefighters and other emergency workers to communicate with people in collapsed buildings or subways."
Sound familiar (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sound familiar (Score:2)
We've been using underground radio in Australian mines for decades. Leaky feeder [minesite.com.au] systems are common in most mechanised mines, and personal emergency devices (PED [minesite.com.au]) are available that use ULF signals to transmit text messages through the ground. If this guy has found a way to encode voice as well it's an improvement, but not groundbreaking (pun intended).
Re:Roland spams Digg too (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Roland spams Digg too (Score:2)
VLF has been used for submarines for decades (Score:5, Informative)
Re:VLF has been used for submarines for decades (Score:1)
I'm sure there are lots of practical difficulties though.
Re:VLF has been used for submarines for decades (Score:5, Informative)
The navy's ELF is just that...ELF...it sends text only. This is no email system, this is exactly what needs to be sent, and thats it...and some messages take several minutes to send. Sending voice data would take an extremely long time...and transmitting for that long wears down batteries. Your LMR(land mobile radio) be it motorola, etc, MIGHT last an entire day or 8/12 hr workday...but it only gets keyed for about 20 minutes of that timeperiod, if that.
I think, even if it was VLF instead of ELF, they would be far better served to make a keypad, and force people to type short messages to transmit. That way it might actually last for 3 or 4 days if there were an emergency. Otherwise it simply wouldn't have the power to maintain sporadic communications for that kind of timeframe.
Re:VLF has been used for submarines for decades (Score:1)
Re:VLF has been used for submarines for decades (Score:1)
(them's "bog rolls", for you non-American speakers)
~
Troglographs are not new (Score:5, Informative)
These are not radios (Score:2)
wait a second. (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, miners? Oops.
Fact of the matter is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fact of the matter is... (Score:2)
If you don't make it to a refuge station, you're dead anyway.
Mine refuge stations are fed with high-pressure air lines. If those lines get damaged, you probably won't survive long enough for anyone to sink down new lines.
I can't imagine this kind of communication helping much. People don't wander mines aimlessly. After a cave-in, they're either at the job site, the refuge station, or somewhere in between. If they're on the surface, then their tag wouldn't be on the tag-board.
Maybe at best, a device
In other news (Score:1, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:2)
Not deep enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:2)
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:3)
As regards your allegations about mine safety practices, you are (pardon the phrase) dead right.(*)
(*)Useta live in West Virgina. Study the history of coal companies before you call anyone in high-tech "evil".
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:1)
agreed. i'm in wv now.
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:2)
I'm not sure that acoustics is the answer here, especially if you're talking about an 8000-ft depth. Acoustical waves travel well through rock, but exciting the rock in the first place takes a lot of force. As a comparison, ground-borne vibration propagation test equipment (used for train vibration assessments [hmmh.com]) typically put out peak forces in the 6,000 to 10,000 lbs range, and the si
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:2)
Can be made to work (Score:3, Insightful)
Most rockfalls leave the main shaft ok. You could run a cable down the shaft and have "access points" at vaious depths etc. The VLF only has to cover the last bit to the actual miner.
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:2)
In other words..."Holy crap. This thing is not useful in every possible situation imaginable. Therefore, it is totally useless. Let's try something else that may or may not work."
Jebus, dude..calm down. Here's a new use for an old technology. Let's see what it can do before we blow it off completely.
Re:Not deep enough. (Score:1)
However, deeeeeep mines (gold in Homestake's case) are probably vastly out numbered by 'shallow' coal mines in the Eastern US.
As a side note,
http://neutrino.lbl.gov/Homestake/LOI/ [lbl.gov]
http://www.state.sd.us/homestake/ [state.sd.us]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestake_Mine_(South _Dakota) [wikipedia.org]
Nothing new here (Score:5, Informative)
Cave Radio & Electronics Group [bcra.org.uk]
Google "Cave Radios" [google.com]
Granted this guy's sounds a little more advanced with DSP and stuff, but still not a new concept.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:1)
Yes but this is for use in mines where there is no sunlight. Big difference.
How about a standing wave? (Score:2)
Low power (cheap) underground radios talk to the underground node.
Or am I missing something obvious...
Re:How about a standing wave? (Score:2)
Radio waves don't travel too well through rock/soil. The very long wavelength (hence low frequency) of this proposed product would theoretically be less absorbed/reflected by the rock and soil, but I can't imagine it being any significant amount more effective than existing VHF/UHF radio systems.
In my opinion, the most effective and also the cheapest way to communicate with miners is with copper. I mean, if you can get people down there, you can certainly get a cable do
Make that armored copper (Score:2)
Leaky coax is a commercial product, sold under the name Radiax. I know someone
Re:Make that armored copper (Score:1)
Re:Make that armored copper (Score:3, Interesting)
But yet, it's still a pain in the ass. If you cant see a leaky feeder hanging from the roof, there's no comms. It's strictly line-of-sight. Even though it's armoured cable, a ton of rock will easily crush it.
So forget using leaky feeder cable for rescue.
If I co
Wouldn't help (Score:2)
partially a matter of economics (Score:5, Informative)
Which is not to say that accidents never happen, but when a mine has been cited at nearly every safety inspection, and has not paid fines, one wonders whether more safety gizmos are really going to do any good.
Re:partially a matter of economics (Score:2)
Is this what they used in "The Core"?? (Score:2)
Re:Is this what they used in "The Core"?? (Score:1)
Check out http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html [intuitor.com]
that's great (Score:1)
Re:that's great (Score:2)
And the electronic companies charging 900% market arent scum? Where as gold miners HAVE TO SELL their
gold at spot price, not 900%. The sell price is fixed, your margins are determined by your
mining efficiency and labour and stupid local govt whores+taxes.
Re:that's great (Score:1)
Not deep enough (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not deep enough (Score:1)
Developped in caving activities up to 1Km deep (Score:5, Informative)
Hi there.
You better check that out : systeme Nicola [cegetel.net]. I don't put a hand on publishing date, but some folks in Europe are developing such a system for a while. They are aiming at caving rescue activities. In specific conditions they got the communication through 1000 m of rock. Interesting. Funny as well to get a feeling on how polluted can be our environment in the low frequencies realm.
Bye. Z.
Re:Developped in caving activities up to 1Km deep (Score:2)
Re:Developped in caving activities up to 1Km deep (Score:2)
Good point. Also, AFAIU the system described in the article do not need grouding: the two systems do not use the same principles. One is based on electromagnetisme, the other on earth conductivity. So, I was a bit hasty at meaning they are similar. That is also the reason why one is limited to 500 feet range while the other can reach through up to 3000 thick rock.
Bye. Z.
Coming from a coal mining area.. (Score:1)
On a side note, am i the only one who saw the article title and wondered what some pirate radio station would have to do with safety??? Probably so.
Lifesaver for commuters, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lifesaver for commuters, too (Score:3, Informative)
Now as for mines, such systems are useful for tunnels which don't change much, such as u
Re:Lifesaver for commuters, too (Score:2)
Three cave radios (Score:2, Informative)
- The MolePhone
- The HeyPhone
- System Nicola
I believe they all operate at around 87 kHz. The Mole Phone has been around for 30 years or so; the others are newer and more high-tech, with greater range.
Grintek Mine radios (Score:4, Interesting)
These radios used a 100kHz carrier and was basically inductive radios, using the shoulder strap as an antenna. It could penetrate 100m of solid rock. During that journey, it would typically find some piece of metal - pipes, railway tracks, whatever - couple to that and provide communications throughout an underground mine.
So it seems that this guy is re-inventing 1970s technology. It is a proven concept and should work well.
Alternative solution (Score:1)
For every 10 metres of tunnel dug a scanner is placed.
Every miner has a tag about their person which triggers the scanner by moving past it.
If an incident occurs, the miners exact location in the *old* tunnel network is ascertained.
Sure, the rock might have moved since, but its a much better starting point than nothing.
Re:Alternative solution (Score:1, Insightful)
- the fact that every scanner will need a hard line back to whatever computer system is collating the data (or at least a radio bearer which it can communicate with).
- the maintenance overhead of say an average small mines crew of about 150 undergrounders needing to make sure their RFID tag is working every day and fixing them if they are not.
- All this gear having to work in an environment which is incredibly tough on equipment. For example, your RFID sca
VLF for data transmission is old hat... (Score:2)
Devices could easily be designed to carry data such as percent oxygen, number of heartbeats present, nearest locator beacon, etc. Very low data rate, but still good enough to get this sort of quick-and-dirty textual stuff through...
60s radicals had underground radio (Score:2)
It was easy. They took high powered audio amplifiers and connected the wires which would have gone to speakers to steel rods driven into the ground several feet apart. I don't remember exactly how far apart they were. One could recieve the signals by attaching a sensitive audio applifier to a similar set of rods. IIRC,