Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The increasing level of automation in underground mining operations in order to improve their efficiency will bring a myriad of electronic devices (e.g. for data or video) into the mine shafts. In other confined environment situations, e.g. military operations in caverns, electronic devices can yield a significant tactical advantage. In order to maximize such benefits, networked communications between these electronic devices are required to share the huge amount of data processed by the individual units, for which fast and wireless connection is also a necessity. Many such technical needs are expected to be addressed by the emerging Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and the future generations of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), for which unlicensed bands near 60 GHz worldwide are favorably considered. The unlicensed ample bandwidth available in this band (up to 7 GHz) will enable multi-gigabit rate data transfer between such devices. This three-year project proposal targets the design of multi-gigabit, millimeter-wave WLAN/WPAN wireless systems for underground and confined environments. The project will deal in great part with the propagation characteristics at these high frequencies in such peculiar environments. The investigators will build upon their previous LRTCS underground environment propagation work at 2 GHz and 5 GHz which demonstrated propagation behavior differing significantly from that observed in more conventional environments with smooth surfaces, notably as a result of the very rough surfaces of the mine shafts. Narrowband and broadband measurement campaigns are planned at 60 GHz as well as statistical modeling work based on the results of the measurements. These propagation study results, e.g. in terms of the millimeter-wave waveguide effect in the underground environment, will help determine whether millimeter-wave WLAN/WPANs can offer cost-effective, reliable and very high throughput solutions for such environments as compared with competing systems such as ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. As such, the project work will also involve millimeter-wave WLAN/WPANs system design and trials in the underground mining environment.