Airflow for miners using 5G technology

Recently Ericsson partnered with Ambra to provide automate ventilation, equipment tracking, etc. for underground miners using 5G technology. In the market, one of companies, which provides solution to optimize “airflow” for miners, is Bestech using active RFID tags.

Let me analyze solution that could be provided by Ericsson and Ambra using 5G technology and military telecom model, i.e. RBS equipped with an RBS Box (server), and those RBS Boxes could communicate with each other in a network as well as to its central server using wireless communication.

1. General Information

A mine must have its modelling to estimate the volume of each level, and amount of air required at each section in activity occurred.

At the junction of the shaft and each level,

·         An RBS and its Box could be installed to provide 5G communication to the entire level and staff working there. The RBS Box could be equipped with wireless LAN to communicate with the RBS Box at level above it in order to get its signals relayed back to the central center on the ground for decision making.

·         A powerful fan is installed and supplementary fans (if needed) provide necessary airflow to miners working in this level.

Above ground at the shaft position, there could be a very powerful fan blowing air along the shaft. The air will be then pumped to required level by junctional fans to each level as needed.

Depending on the number of miners and equipment operated in each level, the amount of airflow may be different. Bestech estimates that each staff would require 1 CKFM, and a pickup truck may require 2 CKFM (my guess). The speed of fans above ground and junctional fans would be operated differently to push required airflow to the area of mining activity.

2. 5G Solution

Each junctional fan would be communicated with the junctional RBS Box using wireless LAN. The communication signals/messages would be relayed to 5G central server using RBS Box’s network. The 5G central server would pass information to the fan/airflow/mining server, so it could analyze and perform required tasks. The airflow server could adjust speed of a junctional fan by sending signals or messages (command data) to 5G central server, where information will be relayed to the junctional RBS Box and then the junctional fan.

Each miner would be assigned a mobile phone with an interface to attach his equipment with his ID.

For example, John will be working on Level A with a pickup truck, thus Level A would require 3 KCFM.

·         John must open a user interface on his phone to assign a pickup truck to his ID or phone.

·         When John is in Level A, the Level A’s RBS would detect his mobile phone via registration or a phone call. The Level A’s RBS Box would relay information back to its 5G server, where information will be passed on a network to the airflow server.

·         The airflow server would calculate speeds of the above ground fan and junctional fan(s) in order to provide 3 KCFM in Level A.

·         The airflow server would send a command to required fan(s), via 5G central server and RBS Boxes, in order to set their speeds accordingly.

When John left Level A, the RBS Box and airflow server would perform required tasks to turn off junctional fans to save energy.

John could actively assign and remove any equipment associated to his ID on his phone in order to get enough airflow in his working area. The ID of his phone and associated equipment ID would be passed to the airflow server via RBS Box network and its central server, e.g. an automated application on his mobile phone fetching and sending data periodically OR after an assign or unassigned of equipment ID, an mobile phone app would send data back.

3. Tracking or automate equipment operations

Tracking a staff movement or presence in a level could be done by tracking his mobile phone. An exact location would require GPS or more RBSs in each level and the mining drift is not uniformed. I am not sure about this. The tracking server could communicate with 5G central server in similar way as the airflow server.

If Ambra and Ericsson wanted to remotely control equipment in an area, they must install special control box in the equipment, and remotely control those equipment from above ground using RBS Box network as described above.

News: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ericsson-ambra-sign-global-contract-143100142.html

Disclaimers: I don’t know how Ericsson and Ambra positioned their RBS and fans, which could change the communication strategy described above. Each mine configuration is different too.

Multiple Standard Systems

1. Deployment of new standard without impacting current services
There are many radio base stations (RBS) deployed in cities supporting different telecom standards such as 3G, 4G, and 5G. Locations of those RBS had been planned to cover the entire areas effectively. Having reserved another location for a new RBS with another standard could be expensive, thus we could incorporate the new telecom standard’s subsystem in the existing RBS as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1. An example of RBS supporting 3G, 4G, and 5G standards.

Each telecom standard has been allocated a unique frequency and protocol. Their transceiver (transmitter and receiver) could pick up appropriate signals from the antenna or sending out signals using appropriate frequency to the antenna.

Those 3G, 4G, and 5G’s subsystems are loaded on the RBS as 3 separate subsystems to lower costs of software development even though developers could eliminate redundancy or duplicate components further, because those subsystems must have common modules or interface. The plus side of it was to be able to deploy another subsystem quickly and independently; and avoid impacting functionality (bugs) in existing live subsystem. 

3G, 4G, or 5G subsystem could communicate to other external telecom components or nodes via the Interface to wireless telecom network with its protocol. This Interface module would also be able to receive incoming external signals and dispatch those to correct subsystem for processing.

The above notes were for an RBS, but this model is also applicable to a mobile phone or any equipment supporting multiple standards.

2. SIU and Police sharing telecom networks

This model was originally proposed to police (5G) telecom system. The Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of police would be able to develop their own communication standard and loaded this system on police (5G) RBS. SIU’s system would include different protocol and frequency, thus they could share the RBS’s processing power, but data would be processed separately. The police (5G) system is left intact.

Figure 2. SIU and Police Systems

3.  A common practice in development of a multi-protocol system

Figure 1 showed a strategy to introduce a new subsystem without impacting existing and working system to avoid possible interruption of services to users. However, figure 3 illustrated a common practice by system providers to implement additional features from an evolved protocol into an existing system.

Figure 3. An example of implementation of 4G and 5G subsystems into an existing working 3G subsystem.

In the figure above, the (3G, 4G, or 5G) Mobile Base Station subsystems would handle the differences in protocols by 3G, 4G, and 5G standards. The output and input of MBS subsystems would be the common protocol toward the core telecom subsystem. Usually the RBS would communicate with an MSC to handle routing and voice connections for mobile users.

4. A design of multi-frequency/protocol system using a single chip

I think, Qualcomm made a modem chip, Snapdragon X55, supporting all standards, i.e. 3G, 4G, and 5G. This is probably why Qualcomm chip is so expensive. X55 source: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-x55-5g-modem

Figure 4. An example of a mobile phone’s design using Snapdragon X55 modem chip

5. Sharing a frequency band by different service providers

Usually telecom providers or operators used the different frequency bands to provide wireless services.

However many operators could use "frequency modulation" or "phase shift key modulation" to provide services to their users using the same frequency band as long as they provided different amplitudes in carrier waves. The wireless receiver would extract data from wave carriers with expected amplitude, i.e. allocating different amplitudes to adjacent operators in an area.

Disclaimers:

I haven't worked in RF for telecom industry. I used to work in mobile telephony networks at Ericsson.

For multiple bands, they would need either new antennae or circuitry to branch out required data. Perhaps band pass filter would be used.

For multiple protocols, it would require technical analysis to identify the differences and common between those protocols/frequencies in order to select an optimized solution.

Some references about multi-bands in telecom

* "Changing bands or modes is done automatically by phones that support these options. Usually the phone will have a default option set, such as 1900-MHz TDMA, and will try to connect at that frequency with that technology first. If it supports dual bands, it will switch to 800 MHz if it cannot connect at 1900 MHz."

* https://www.commscope.com/Blog/How-to-Efficiently-Support-Multiple-Frequency-Bands/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-band_device