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."

Comments

Sound familiar

[CCFreak2K]

Sounds like something I saw in Dante's Peak. No pun intended.

Lifesaver for commuters, too

[ozbird]

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.

Grintek Mine radios

[HermanAB]

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.

Re:Make that armored copper

[ColaMan]

That's exactly what we use undergound - leaky feeders with repeater/amp modules every thousand feet or so. Coupled with standard VHF radios it works ok. It also carries a "PED" - a one-way text pager that's embedded in the battery pack for my caplamp.

But yet, it's still a pain in the ass. If you cant see a leaky feeder hanging from the roof, there's no comms. It's strictly line-of-sight. Even though it's armoured cable, a ton of rock will easily crush it.

So forget using leaky feeder cable for rescue.

If I could just get a text pager that worked outside the range of a leaky feeder, I'd be happy. This looks like it might be a solution.