Advanced telemetry and electronic monitoring systems have made mining safer and more efficient. The application of relevant technologies has allowed mines to venture into areas and achieve results that would not have been previously possible.
However, most of these systems are heavily reliant on the ability of devices to stay connected and communicate with each other, transfer data, facilitate communications, and carry instructions or warning/emergency messages.
While for many years mines in remote areas have come to accept challenges with their communication backbones, technology has now reached a point in time where patchy communication and the inability to transfer information to the mining face is not something miners need to accept.
Creating private LTE networks for both underground and open-pit mines is now not only possible, but it is also the direction most mines are looking to take. The best way to ensure successful deployment of a private LTE network at your operation is to secure a team of experts in signal generation and signal propagation for LTE. We can help.
When government regulations and local Telcos create challenges for LTE deployments, WiFi and pseudo-WiFi networks (like 5GHz MPLS backbones) are still workable solutions – especially on surface. These solutions are often more affordable than LTE and have similar performance characteristics for data transmission.