Zigbee Based Wireless Data Acquisition System for Underground Mines — A Feasibility Study

Underground mining involves miners working in a risky and constrained environment where issues like air quality, temperature, humidity, noxious gases etc. is a matter of great concern. To tackle these, wired telemonitoring systems are widely deployed in mines for continuous monitoring of mine environment. With the advent of wireless technology, wired data acquisition systems are becoming obsolete and are being replaced by their high speed wireless counterparts. In this paper, a data acquisition system has been proposed which uses a Zigbee based wireless sensor network to acquire real-time data from sensors placed at strategic points in an underground mine. To assess the feasibility of this system and ascertain packet delivery from a mobile node to the monitoring station, a field trial involving Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) modelling studies was carried out in an underground mine.