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An Underground Radio to Save Lives
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Duluth News Tribune wrote last week about a communication device which could be a lifesaver for miners. This invention is the brainchild of David Reagor, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). His prototype radio works at depths of 500 feet and is based on very low frequency electromagnetic radiation and digital signal processors. A commercial version is in the works and could be used not only by workers trapped in a mine, but also by firefighters and other emergency workers to communicate with people in collapsed buildings or subways."
Sounds like something I saw in Dante's Peak. No pun intended.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
He linked the news article, not his blog, what's the big deal?
Very low frequency (VLF) has an extremely low data rate, yet it has a great ability to penetrate earth and water. The Navy has been using it for a long time to communicate with submarines.
Troglographs are not new.
Evil people are out to get you.
"A communication device which could be a lifesaver for miners"? We already have Myspace.
Wait, miners? Oops.
In recent mine collapses, two things were needed in the mining tunnels, oxygen, and communication. Without oxygen, humans die. Without communication, humans are lost in a large mine shaft with relatively no way to signal those above of where ventilation shafts can drilled to vent toxic gases and supply oxygen. The truth is, communication is vital, and the lack thereof has been proven deadly, with this radio, perhaps mining accidents don't become mining tragedies in the future.
Karma: Good, or bust!
Apple is already working on a nano ipod for miners which comes with a radio,video, music. Code named "underground". You can also connect to iTunes!!
South Dakota's Homestake gold mine is 8,000 feet deep. 16 times deeper than this thing can reach. What's needed are acoustical communicators that can ping through the rock with a coded signal telling the miner's location. But given the safety record of mine operators, they won't update the codes as new side-tunnels are dug, won't keep the batteries charged, won't keep the receivers in working order, and won't train the safety personnel.
Sounds similar to what Tesla was doing. His power transmition system was sold to Hearst as a means of communication but Hearst scrapped it when he found Tesla intended to use it to provide free electricity. Most people think Tesla was transmiting power through the air but it was actually using the ground as a conductor.
there's a start-up in North Carolina that has a hospital-asset location tracking system which also works in mines, and looks far more promising than this low-frequency system ... unfortunately, the start-up is still in 'stealth mode" and there's nothing useful on their website
It would be very hard to make a portable VLF transmitter because the antenna would be miniscule compared with a wavelength. For example, at 100 kHz, a 150 foot antenna is tiny. On the other hand, a range of 500 feet is much less than one wavelength at any very low frequency. In other words, the receiver would still be well within the near field. The inductive field would still be big enough to be useful. The advantage is that you could get something like broadband (ie. audio) performance without having to build an impossible antenna.
Cave Radio & Electronics Group
Google "Cave Radios"
Granted this guy's sounds a little more advanced with DSP and stuff, but still not a new concept.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Would it be possible to just setup a standing wave between the surface and some underground node? To chat, all you have to do is modulate the wave. Right?
/Radios & antennas are not my forte
Low power (cheap) underground radios talk to the underground node.
Or am I missing something obvious...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Which is not to say that accidents never happen, but when a mine has been cited at nearly every safety inspection, and has not paid fines, one wonders whether more safety gizmos are really going to do any good.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I was always annoyed by the fact that, though the movie tried to be vaguely scientifically accurate, their ability to communicate with the people traveling thousands of miles beneath the earth's surface seemed magical at best. Maybe it was something like this!
now try convincing profit-oriented mining companies to buy it. they're scum.
It's a joke, you dumb-asses. The Navy used simular technology to kill off whales.
Here in Australia there are two miners trapped around 935 metres (3116 ft) below the ground. They managed to contact them using existing radios. Fact is, most mines are deeper than 500ft.
Hi there.
You better check that out : systeme Nicola. I don't put a hand on publishing date, but some folks in Europe are developing such a system for a while. They are aiming at caving rescue activities. In specific conditions they got the communication through 1000 m of rock. Interesting. Funny as well to get a feeling on how polluted can be our environment in the low frequencies realm.
Bye. Z.
Radio Free Mines?
You have been REPORTED!
A standing wave is just a traveling wave that gets reflected. It would have all the same aborption problems as any radio system on the same frequency going through the smae materials.
In other words, your tax dollar at work via the US Navy and HAARP Project.
Welcome to my freaks' list!
Rationality is not permitted on Slashdot.
it's good to see any new advances in mine safety. I'm only about 50 miles from the sago mine area, and i live literally a stones throw from an old ( now reclaimed) deep mine. A walk through any graveyard around here will show how dangerous mining has been over the years.
On a side note, am i the only one who saw the article title and wondered what some pirate radio station would have to do with safety??? Probably so.
Refine that further, and combine copper with radios. I was chatting with someone on another site who pointed out that you could use badly shielded coax to extend the range of radios. If you're trapped away from the nearest phone but have intact leaky coax within range, then when you key your radio the signal leaks into the coax, and then leaks out everywhere else including (maybe-let's-hope) the area where uninjured personnel are.
Leaky coax is a commercial product, sold under the name Radiax. I know someone who got the same effect for less money by buying allegedly fully shielded coax from Radio Sh***.
They work by induction loops (ie are magnetic). They are not radio. Induction loop comms predates Marconi. The big challenge with VLF is to make a big enough antenna.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I LOVE YOU EDNA! You did such a good job on The Superficial!
Most rockfalls leave the main shaft ok. You could run a cable down the shaft and have "access points" at vaious depths etc. The VLF only has to cover the last bit to the actual miner.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As loss of radio contact was one of the factors the resulted in Jean Charles de Menezes being shot dead by police, radios that work in the Underground ("tube") as well as underground would be a good thing.
I'm aware of these three underground radios:
- The MolePhone
- The HeyPhone
- System Nicola
I believe they all operate at around 87 kHz. The Mole Phone has been around for 30 years or so; the others are newer and more high-tech, with greater range.
Mine radios used to be manufactured by SAAB Grintek, but was sold to a company called Guduza, which promptly disappeared without trace.
These radios used a 100kHz carrier and was basically inductive radios, using the shoulder strap as an antenna. It could penetrate 100m of solid rock. During that journey, it would typically find some piece of metal - pipes, railway tracks, whatever - couple to that and provide communications throughout an underground mine.
So it seems that this guy is re-inventing 1970s technology. It is a proven concept and should work well.
Oh well, what the hell...
Maybe a slip-up - do a Digg search for 'primidi' (his blog site) and see how many 'different' people have submitted stories to Digg linking to that site (I counted 18). Surely Roland isn't posting under numerous different account names? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!
AT&ROFLMAO
I believe using RFID in mines would be beneficial.
For every 10 metres of tunnel dug a scanner is placed.
Every miner has a tag about their person which triggers the scanner by moving past it.
If an incident occurs, the miners exact location in the *old* tunnel network is ascertained.
Sure, the rock might have moved since, but its a much better starting point than nothing.
liqbase
http://tf.nist.gov/stations/wwvb.htm
Devices could easily be designed to carry data such as percent oxygen, number of heartbeats present, nearest locator beacon, etc. Very low data rate, but still good enough to get this sort of quick-and-dirty textual stuff through...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
These aren't actually radios because they don't use radio waves. They use an inductive field. There are a couple of good posts. Check the link in the Trogloradio post. "It might not be radio" also explains it.
The biggest misery with VLF is the antenna. Unless you have a gargantuan antenna you can't get any bandwidth. With an inductive field, you just need an inductor. You can get the equivalent of ultra wideband easily. With VLF, this means you can transmit voice.
The downside with inductive fields is that it is hard to get ranges greater than a few thousand feet.
and they used it to communicate their activities to each other. It could reach for miles and had the police confused since they couldn't figure out how the radicals were communicating.
It was easy. They took high powered audio amplifiers and connected the wires which would have gone to speakers to steel rods driven into the ground several feet apart. I don't remember exactly how far apart they were. One could recieve the signals by attaching a sensitive audio applifier to a similar set of rods. IIRC, with 250 watts of output power they were able to communicate 10-15 miles "underground".
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Thank you, I am trying to clean up the internet. I shut down the Superficial and if this site doesn't stop the disgusting posts, I will shut it down also. I already have 5 names and counting!
As important as communication in such incidents, how about locating the people? How difficult would it be to set up a mock-GPS of raio towers onground, and all miners have transmitters interpolating and then sending back their 3-D location. These "radio" towers / devices could be based on this technology, and achieve this purpose.