Rajant Corporation, a leading provider of dynamic, pervasive, multi-band and multi-frequency wireless solutions, today announced that Gary Anderson, senior vice president, sales will present, “The Application of Wireless Networks in Mining to Collect Condition Data,” at the Ivara Reliability Leadership Summit on Thursday, September 23, 2010 from 1:00pm – 2:30pm MT at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel in Denver, Colorado. The Summit will run from September 21-23, 2010.
Mr Anderson’s presentation will illustrate how Rajant technology is leveraged to manage the Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation (KUCC), the second largest copper producer in the United States, with a resilient mobile wireless network. KUCC, which produces about 13 percent of U.S. copper, had an urgent need to manage over 85 300–ton haul trucks and 62 pieces of auxiliary gear including dozers and graders. In addition, KUCC needed to connect twelve shovels, pumps, operations vehicles and other production equipment in to the wireless network for control and management purposes.
“Kennecott Utah is a massive mine, and operates on a 24x7x365 basis, and so requires a data and communications network that is not only flexible and available, but able to support some very demanding environmental and application-related challenges,” noted Anderson. “The combination of Rajant’s InstaMesh protocol and BreadCrumb technology enabled KUCC to deploy a reliable, high-bandwidth network that overcomes the mine’s physical challenges while supporting its demanding applications. Communication reliability is essential to continuous mining operations and safety!”
Installation of a wireless network requires an enormous amount of coordination, scale, planning and support infrastructure. KUCC required that Rajant’s dynamic network be easily deployed, exceptionally rugged to endure the harsh conditions, and able to reliably cover an ever-changing topography without continuously moving, adding or rebuilding infrastructure. The network also had to connect the hundreds of moving devices within the mine (haul trucks, shovels, dozers, graders, etc) and allow them to communicate with each other in real time while keeping the network intact. Only a small portion of the mine network has fixed wireless nodes— everything else is in constant motion. KUCC needed a high-bandwidth mobile wireless solution that could provide maximum network availability, redundancy and low-latency for managing the mining operations.
KUCC runs many advanced mining applications that require a network that can handle the unique characteristics of each application. Key applications include vehicle/equipment health monitoring, ground-based GPS, machine function reporting, management of drilling and blasting, slope monitoring, and fuel consumption monitoring.
Rajant successfully implemented over 200 BreadCrumbs, each with two nodes, in an interconnected wireless network that allows loader trucks, shovels, pumps, laptops and other production equipment to communicate with each other in real time. These commercially secure BreadCrumbs can scale to much higher node densities as the network grows and bandwidth availability actually increases.
The nodes securely interact with the data command center across a meshed, self-healing network to provide critical, real-time information that drives efficiency and safety across all aspects of mining operations. The nodes rapidly adapt to any changes in the network topology, assuring that IP traffic uptime and bandwidth are maximized.
Mr Anderson’s presentation will also illustrate some of Rajant’s work with numerous mines around the world, and secure mobile battalion networks, port security and surveillance systems, Smart threads integrated radiological sensors (STIRS) and Project Wolfhound, a ground-based, rucksack-mounted, direction-finding tool used for force protection.