Fog-IoT-Based Slope Monitoring (FIoTSM) System With LoRa Communication in Open-Cast Mine

Personal safety of mine professionals in open-cast (OC) mines is a critical concern in mines management and administrative agencies. Miners are required to perform many mining activities and hence are prone to unexpected calamities such as slope failure which is a frequently occurring catastrophe in OC mines. With emerging technologies like wireless sensor network (WSN), fog computing (FC), Internet of Things (IoT), and low-power technologies like long-range (LoRa), the task of monitoring OC mines has become more feasible, cost-effective, and efficient. In this research work, a novel real-time fog-IoT slope monitoring (FIoTSM) system is developed to monitor OC mines. Performance of LoRa coverage is assessed in line of sight (LoS) and no line of sight (NLoS) scenarios. Due to an uncertain condition of mine, where slope failure can occur anytime, latency-free data transmission and processing are required. Thus, IoT is applied to deploy LoRa modules for wireless communication under FC, boosting the monitoring system with the power of LoRa and FC. The data transmitted are permanently stored in cloud servers making it ubiquitously available to users for analytics. The experimental outcome projects the system to be up-and-coming for smart real-time monitoring of slope of OC mines and thereby alert the miners of any failure.