There is increasing pressure on the mining industry to maintain or even improve productivity in the face of tough economic conditions. Added to this a regulatory need for enhanced safety of personnel and the desire for improved operational efficiency. These factors are the impetus behind the use of smart solutions that are underpinned by the adoption of IT and automation technology.

According to RADWIN Southern Africa sales director Nicholas Ehrke, a number of mining companies have already introduced remote-controlled machinery to their fleets, with monitoring equipment performing regular checks on the health status of this equipment. Along with this increased remote automation comes the need for higher bandwidth connectivity to support the video, data and VoIP applications.

MiRO, a local distributor for RADWIN solutions, believes that the mining space will increasingly benefit from the deployment of RADWIN’s PtP (Point-to-Point) and PtMP (Point-to-Multipoint) technology. There are various deployment scenarios, dependent on whether the solution is defined as a nomadic or a mobility option, as well as whether it will be used above or below the ground.

“We recommend using the RADWIN FiberinMotion® Mobility, with a range in excess of 10 km, for mobility applications and the RADWIN JET Smart Beamforming Point-to-Multipoint for nomadic and PtMP applications, for distances of up to 40 km. One of the big differentiators for these solutions is that they are able to seamlessly perform handover between sectors with ultra-low latency and jitter, combined with high capacity throughput of up to 250 Mbps per subscriber for the mobility applications ,” says Marco de Ru, CTO at MiRO.

The unique air interface of the RADWIN JET beamforming solution provides robust and stable performance even in the harshest spectrum conditions. Mutual interference between sectors and sites is eliminated by the integrated GPS synchronisation feature, which ensures linear capacity growth even when users add more radio units.

The RADWIN solutions have been deployed in a number of live as well as proof of concept (POC) projects on earthmoving and mining equipment, trucks and light delivery vehicles. They are ideally suited for backhaul to communication trailers; fleet management connectivity; sensor connectivity for seismic radars, dewatering systems and meter reading; automation of stackers and reclaimers; and monitoring and control of tele-operated machinery.

“The units, for example, allow the driver of remotely deployed vehicles to communicate directly with a control room through the relay of CCTV camera footage inside the vehicle cab. The link allows for uninterrupted two-way communication and the GPS tracking function allows the control room to determine the exact location of vehicles at any time. Typically mine operators would use these solutions to relay data from the cameras and audio systems within vehicle cabs via backhaul to a PtMP and tower, then use the PtP unit to backhaul the data to the control room for a centralised flow of data,” says De Ru.

“Our proprietary interface guarantees transmission of data in difficult areas, to ensure that communication is never compromised. This makes them a boon for the typically inclement conditions found on mines and they are generally deployed for mission-critical applications where 99.999& transmission uptime is the minimum requirement.

RADWIN is the only company that can promise CIR (committed information rate) for wireless transmission, providing a guaranteed throughput per device, whereas other solutions only guarantee best effort. RADWIN solutions therefore afford the mining fraternity protection from loss of revenue, loss of reputation and in extreme cases, loss of life,” says Ehrke.