Underground mining is an industry that preserves the miners' safety and efficiency in their work using wireless communication systems as a tool. In addition to communication links characterized by radio frequency signals, optical links in the visible light spectrum are under intense research for underground mining applications due to their high transmission rates and immunity to electromagnetic interference. However, the design of a robust visible-light communication (VLC) system for underground mining is a challenging task due to the harsh propagation conditions encountered in mining tunnels. To assist researchers in the design of such VLC systems, we present in this paper a novel channel model that incorporates important factors that influence the quality of the VLC link in underground mines. Features such as an arbitrary positioning and orientation of the optical transmitter and receiver, tunnels with irregular walls, shadowing by large machinery, and scattering by dust clouds are considered. These factors are integrated into a single modeling framework that lends itself for the derivation of compact mathematical expressions for the overall DC gain, the impulse response, the root mean square delay spread, and the received power of the proposed VLC channel model. Our analytical results are validated by computer simulations. These results show that the rotation and tilt of the transmitter and receiver, as well as the tunnels' irregular walls have a notorious influence on the magnitude and temporal dispersion of the VLC channel's line of sight (LoS) and non-LoS components. Furthermore, results show that shadowing reduces the LoS component's magnitude significantly. Our findings also show that scattering by dust particles contributes slightly to the total VLC channel gain, although it generates a large temporal dispersion of the received optical signal. INDEX TERMS Channel impulse response, channel modeling, scattering, shadowing, underground mining, visible light communication.

This paper proposes two solutions based on angle diversity receivers (ADRs) to mitigate inter-cell interference (ICI) in underground mining visible light communication (VLC) systems, one of them is a novel approach. A realistic VLC system based on two underground mining scenarios, termed as mining roadway and mine working face, is developed and modeled. A channel model based on the direct component in line-of-sight (LoS) and reflections of non-line-of-sight (NLoS) links is considered, as well as thermal and shot noises. The design and mathematical models of a pyramid distribution and a new hemi-dodecahedral distribution are addressed in detail. The performances of these approaches, accompanied by signal combining schemes, are evaluated with the baseline of a single photo-diode in reception. Results show that the minimum lighting standards established in both scenarios are met. As expected, the root-mean-square delay spread decreases as the distance between the transmitters and receivers increases. Furthermore, the hemi-dodecahedron ADR in conjunction with the maximum ratio combining (MRC) scheme, presents the best performance in the evaluated VLC system, with a maximum user data rate of 250 Mbps in mining roadway and 120 Mbps in mine working face, received energy per bit/noise power of 32 dB and 23 dB, respectively, when the bit error rate corresponds to 10 − 4 , and finally, values of 120 dB in mining roadway and 118 dB in mine working face for signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio are observed in a cumulative distribution function.

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