Distributed Radio Positioning for Personnel Tracking in Coal Mine Tunnels

Received signal strength-based positioning and tracking of humans is a reliable solution for harsh indoor environments like the longwall tunnels at underground coal mining sites. The mining personnel with radio tags on their body can be tracked along a line of sensing reference nodes. The wired bus backbone for the transmission of all sensor data to a central processing station is the limiting factor for the system’s coverage. To extend the 1D coverage up to the kilometers range, we present a distributed localization approach with data compression mechanisms. Therefore, the bus is divided into hierarchical subnets with connecting gateway devices. The positioning accuracy, being dependent on the size of the subnets, is analyzed using simulation results which are based on empirical signal strength values. One mayor achievement of the distributed approach is a nearly unchanged positioning accuracy as the most significant system evaluation criterion. Copyright © 2015 IFSA Publishing, S. L.