LabVIEW based coal mine monitoring and alert system with data acquisition

Coal is one of the important fuels used for electricity generation, steel production, cement manufacturing and as a liquid fuel, also to produce syngas by gasification process. So as to extract this coal, which results into a great importance to the coal mining industry. A large population in the world depends on these coal mine industries for its livelihood. For this, they have to work in various dangerous conditions in the coal mine. A single, small accident can cause the death of the mine worker/workers. So it is important to have a warning system that is capable of detecting the non-safety condition in coal and generating an alarm. A research work deals with design and development of a LabVIEW and micro-controller based coal mine monitoring system using wireless technologies like ZigBee and GSM(Global System for Mobile Communication). Different types of sensors are used for sensing the physical condition parameters in coal mine like temperature, gas, humidity temperature and fire etc. These parameter signals from the sensors are continuously collected by base station situated underground the mine and sent to the ground station on the ground level. A ZigBee wireless communication system is used for the communication between underground mine base station and ground station. These signal are fed to LabVIEW which works as a signal processor and monitoring system. Being a signal processor LabVIEW continuously compares the sensed value with the predefined critical safety values and then gives the alert indication signal accordingly to the GSM system through the micro-controller for calling and sending the message to the safety division. Working as a monitoring and data acquisition system it acquires the data from all the sensors in the form of excel sheet.