One of the most important aspects of any mine engineer’s job is to make sure that the underground mine they work at is extremely safe and does not experience injuries to personnel, production delays, or equipment damage due to unexpected rock falls or collapses within the mine.

The key to making sure that an underground mine is always safe and productive is ongoing, comprehensive monitoring of all aspects of the mine and its operations. The data gathered by this monitoring can then be interpreted and used to work out safety plans, production schedules and other underground solutions to make the mine run better overall.

When it comes to underground solutions for mine monitoring, Installing and properly using a wireless mesh-sensor network that gathers data from a variety of geotechnical sensors and other instruments and makes it easily available to mine engineers is the way to go.

Due to their versatility and effectiveness, underground solutions based on a wireless mesh sensor network can be effectively used in both hard-rock and potash underground mines. In order to keep both of these types of mines safe and operating at optimal efficiency, mine engineers need to collect substantial amounts of geotechnical data, interpret it and then make decisions and take countermeasures where required based on what the data is telling them.

A wireless mesh sensor network gathers data quickly, efficiently and continually from instruments like:

• Extensometers
• Contractometers
• Instrumented cable bolts
• Ground movement monitors
• Sloughmeters
• Gas sensors
• Vibrating-wire sensors, such as piezometers

A comprehensive wireless mesh sensor network composed of geotechnical and other instruments, wireless nodes, and an Ethernet gateway offers the best underground solutions for the monitoring of hard rock and potash mines.