A Routing Protocol for Multisink Wireless Sensor Networks in Underground Coalmine Tunnels

Abstract

Traditional underground coalmine monitoring systems are mainly based on the use of wired transmission. However, when cables are damaged during an accident, it is difficult to obtain relevant data on environmental parameters and the emergency situation underground. To address this problem, the use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has been proposed. However, the shape of coalmine tunnels is not conducive to the deployment of WSNs as they are long and narrow. Therefore, issues with the network arise, such as extremely large energy consumption, very weak connectivity, long time delays, and a short lifetime. To solve these problems, in this study, a new routing protocol algorithm for multisink WSNs based on transmission power control is proposed. First, a transmission power control algorithm is used to negotiate the optimal communication radius and transmission power of each sink. Second, the non-uniform clustering idea is adopted to optimize the cluster head selection. Simulation results are subsequently compared to the Centroid of the Nodes in a Partition (CNP) strategy and show that the new algorithm delivers a good performance: power efficiency is increased by approximately 70%, connectivity is increased by approximately 15%, the cluster interference is diminished by approximately 50%, the network lifetime is increased by approximately 6%, and the delay is reduced with an increase in the number of sinks.

Research on Monitoring and Prewarning System of Accident in the Coal Mine Based on Big Data

“…Reference [33] introduced IOT and WSN in a mine and described the mine production, monitoring, and prewarning system based on big data technology, but it did not explain how to use sensor nodes and how to build the prewarning model. References [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] designed an architecture of monitoring system based on WSN and discussed a data aggregation strategy but did not consider using big data. Our paper focuses on how to design the monitoring and prewarning system suitable for coal mine industry, how to use data aggregation strategy to decrease energy consumption, and how to build a prewarning model to prevent the accident happening in advance.…”

“…The Coalmining tunnels in China usually are categorized with their functions, including development tunnels, preparation tunnels, and mining tunnels [23,30,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. The development tunnels are served for the whole mine, including the horizontal mining area, such as the main haulage roadways and the main return airways.…”

“…For example, the sensor nodes Scientific Programming characteristics (transmission, processor, radio range, etc.) are determined according to the specification of [31,35,39,42]. Table 2 resumes the values of importance factor , , , and .…”

“…In the simulation, we compare the data aggregation strategy with PCEB-MS protocol which is proposed in our previous work [35] and give a simulation to prove the fuzzy comprehensive assessment model can reduce the prewarning time compared with the other methods [33].…”

Energy-Efficient Broadcasting Scheme for Smart Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

“…A real-world project which applied linear topology is provided. In the mines of the Nanyang Coal Industry Co., Ltd., Hengyang, China, the main haulage roadway is approximately 12,000 m long, and most return airways have lengths of more than 1000 m [32]. This kind of underground coalmine tunnels is usually very long and narrow, and some tunnels are approximately thousands of kilometers in length but only several meters in width, as shown in Figure 2.…”