1. Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Information Acquisition
July 9-11, 2007, Jeju City, Korea
Mine Fire Detection System Based on Wireless Sensor
Network *
Wei Tan, Qianping Wang, Hai Huang, Yongling Guo+,Guoxia Zhang
School of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Mining and Technology
Xuzhou 221008, China
Corresponding author: tanweiO328@l26.com
Abstract - The issue of mine safety is quite outstanding Some or all the nodes in WSN may move in the network, so
recent years. Many shortages exist in mine safety systems the topology framework keeps changing as the nodes moves.
supported by current technologies. The features of wireless WSN has the following features: limited hardware resources,
sensor network determined that it well adapts the special needs limited power, center less, self-organize, multi-jump router
of the environment monitoring. This paper presents the design of and dynamic topology framework.
a mine safety system based on wireless sensor network which is
called WMSS. Considering the unsafe factors under the mine, a 3. MINE SAFETY MONITORING SYSTEM
sensor network was designed which can gather and analyze the
concentration of gas under the mine. Thus, a system for real- Orebody under the ground is the main object in mining.
time monitoring the environment under the mine is The environment is quite complex under the ground; there are
accomplished, and it can also provide the pre-warning for the geological faults around the orebody; the five systems for
fire. This paper discussed the components of the system, the gathering, tunneling, airing, electro-mechanical and transport
topology of the network, hardware and software of the nodes. are deployed under the ground, the whole production is
The software design of the operating system is discussed detailed threatened by gas, carbon monoxide, coal dust, water flood,
from the aspect of energy efficient.
static electricity, airy and etc. The traditional method in China
Index Terms - wireless sensor network (WSN); mine safety; mostly depends on human beings. It's not so effective so new
monitoring; TinyOS. methods are expected. The system should include the
following functions: predict of accident, pre-alarming and
1. INTRODUCTION rescue assistant.
Among the factors which influence the mine safety, the
Mine resource is one of the most important parts of the concentration of gas is one of the most important sign. In
natural resource which is concerned by every country in the cretsft oioigsses most otgssnosue for o
world.~~~~~~~~~~ ~
th.su cuffrent safety monitoring systems, sensors used
mine take wire communication method, gas as optic fiber,
world. However, the issue of security in mining iS an unfixed
Hoevr fscrt nmnn sa nie such
problem for all the countries. To monitor the mine is the way electric cable or others. But, it has essential defect; the
to ensure the security of it. But how to build an effective deploym en of lineis. quite c exso thecot of
~~~deployment and m ai n iS high; as sowhe accident do
when ccdt
monitoring system causes much work and effort. * deployment an is o
maintain high;
2. WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK happen, the cable is always damaged completed, it can not
Under the improvement of sensor and computer network supply any information since then.
Wireless sensor network is introduced into mine
technologies, wireless sensor network (WSN) has been monitoring system here. Various kinds of sensors for
improved quickly recently. It has already become a hot particular use collect the real-time information under ground;
research point in the field of information technique. WSN has information which is processed by embedded system then
the features of self-organized, flexible configuration, easy transmit through wireless network; all the collected
expansion. 1-] It specially fits the environment which is information finally go to the monitoring end for managers to
danger and we can not easily get in touch with. Under those judge the condition. This method can effectively
conditions, we can deploy the nodes by tools such as counterbalance the defect of wire equipments. Besides, it is
airplanes. Then, the nodes will self-organize into a network, cheap, convenient, high-reliability and easy-modification.
collect, process and transmit the monitoring information. This paper gives the design of an system which is called
Thus, WSN can be used in the projects of forest fire WMSS (WSN Based Mine Safety System) for the particular
preventing, habitat monitoring of living things, environment use of mine safety monitoring.
monitoring, medical watching, and etc.
Sensors, objects and the observers are the basic three 4. WMSS SYSTEM
facts of sensor network. By using wireless communication, 4.1. WMSS system architecture
sensors can cooperatively sense, collect, process and The statistical data indicates that 7000 of the mine safety
announce the information with other nodes or observers, accident in China is caused by gas. Hence, WMSS system
Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of
China under Grant NO.BK2006039
1-4244-1220-X/07/$25.00 ©C2007 IEEE 148
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2. works mainly on the monitoring and pre-alarming of gas minimum covering, that means use the minimum nodes but
accidents. The system contains three main functions. One is ensure the whole region can be monitored. Based on this,
the real-time environment data collecting, processing and some redundant nodes are introduced in the region with
transmission. Another is the pre-alarming function if it is in complicated topography and bad condition considering of the
danger. The last function is the rescue assistant after the robust of the whole system.
accident happens, history data can be used to analysis the 4.3. Abbreviations andAcronyms
possible reasons.
possible______reasons._____
Data
There two kinds of nodes with different use in this
system. But they have the similar hardware components
Data Monitoring
gathering - processing center concluding sensor module, process module, wireless
system system system communication module and power, as fig 3 shows 4]. The
controlling monitoring sensor module use gas sensors, the process module use the
node
machine system micro embedded processor from ATMEL, the wireless
Wireless Wire communication module use 2.4GHZ wireless communication
communication communication method and batteries are mostly used for power supplying. As
there is particular requirements for electric under ground, so
Fig 1 The Suh systems of WMSS Wireless
Sensor
module
Processing communication
module module
The system is consisted by three sub-systems: the data s AC DC po arn
collecting sub-system, the data processing sub-system and the A _ _
monitoring sub-system. The data collecting system contains Energyproidingmodule
the sensor nodes and the wireless communication parts, using
for real-time gas concentration under ground monitoring. The Fig 3 amewor of the node
collecting nodes are divided into two parts, movable nodes we can only use battery as power for the nodes which are in
~~ ~
stti
moal.oe
and noes Th movabe nodes are responsible for the
and staticn. nodes The r epnil oh
collecting of information within its region and transmit the
the working region; however, wire electric resource can be
used as power where the nodes are close to the ground to
use aowe whrehnou
information with other nodes; the statistic nodes are used for insure long-tme working.
the summarizing of the region data and then transmit the 4.4. software designfor WMSS
summarized data to the main controlling system above As the supporting technology for wireless sensor
ground. The data processing system contains the main networks, operating system must satisfy the special
controlling computer above ground and wire communication technological need brings by WSN. In order to achieve the
network using for the gathering, processing storing and gain of high-efficiency and flexible, it should be much smaller
transmitting of the information from all the lanes. The main than traditional operating systems but to make the most of the
controlling computer then transmits the final data to remote hardware devices at the same time. There are two outstanding
monitoring system. Remote monitoring system provides well features of a signal node in WSN; one is the concurrency,
man-machine interface. It stores the information received and there may be several processors which need to be response, so
show it in web way to the users. the operating system should deal with the condition
4.2. topology architecture of WMSS effectively; the other is that it requires the operating system to
In wireless sensor network, all the nodes are deployed support the applications as the interface of software and
freely among the monitoring region; the nodes compose the hardware.
network by self-organization. WMSS system topology
architecture is given as figure 2 shows. It is designed for the Radio
particular environment under mine according to the traditional sensor jc ion
Controlling
WSN --------------------- -- ----------------------- -
machine ground
o CDH
cip
CD
0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~CD
Hardware driver
nodabe noxde Fig 4 . Architecture of Software Design
According to the features of WSN, the design of operating
Fig2 Architecture of WMSS system for WSN should meets for some demands: small
account of code, modularize, low consumption, erupt
architecture. Movable nodes are deployed in the working side oprbltanrbu. '
under ground, while statistic nodes are placed in the wall of oprbltanrbu.
lanes. The deployment of nodes satisfied the principle of
149
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3. TinyOS (Tiny Micro Threading Operating System) is an important. If the strategy is not suitable, it can cause more
open source embedded operating system. The component consumption instead of save.
based architecture can be quickly applied into various The principle of dynamic voltage scheduling is as
applications. As TinyOS has been designed modular, the core follows: when the computing load is low, the processor
program is very small; it can run on the nodes with limited descends its working voltage and frequency to save the
storage resource effectively and do homologous work. energy[20].
Because of the ripe technology for WSN, TinyOS is chose as 4.4.3. communication protocols
the operating system for nodes. Some modifiers will be done The consumption of communication of a sensor node is
to the core in order to fit the concrete situations. The software in a very large rate, the energy saving strategy has much to do
systems of nodes compose of operating system core and with the communication protocols. The normal energy saving
application program interface. Figure 5 gives the architecture strategy of communication module is decreasing
of the software system for nodes. The bottom layer of the communication discharge, adding dormancy time, multi-skip
operating system contains all the driven programs for the short-distance method and router selecting.
hardware instruments on the nodes; it also provides the MAC protocol deals with the using of communication
implement method of simple but high effective scheduling road and the conflict caused by information broadcasting from
mechanism, interrupt processing, consumption and neighboring nodes. In fact, MAC concerns mainly on energy
communications protocols for higher layers. efficiency problem in WSN. S-MAC is chosen as the MAC
4.4.1. scheduling mechanism protocol as the nodes' protocol in the system. During the
TinyOS is affaire-driven with two-grade scheduling: task broadcasting of data, the nodes which are neither the
and hardware affair. Task is the kind of functions which can dispatcher nor the receiver turn to sleep. When they are
be interrupting. Once a task is scheduling, other tasks can not wakening up, they broadcast their data and receive the very
interrupt it. But the hardware affair which is used to response data for them. The dispatching and receiving nodes pick the
the hardware interruption can rush to seize the processor. RTS and CTS mechanism to occupy the information road so
TinyOS keeps a task scheduling array with the simple that conflict can be less. P]
algorithm of first in first out. The scheduling process is given Routing protocol not only concerns on consumption of
by figure 5. Once if the task array is empty, the system turns a signal node but also concerns on balance consumption of the
to a mode with extremely low consumption. The daily gas whole network. WSN is data centered; the nodes in the
concentration detection is set as task while the pre-alarm is set network are node addressed according to a unified method.
as the affair. The selecting of the way is not based on the address of nodes,
Task queue awaking but according to the interested data. Energy multi-path routing
scheduling Taskl protocol is picked. It builds many paths between the original
4.4. Interrupt- node and aim node. Then the data transmits in one path
2. Taskn according to the consumption of communication and the
li + energy left in the node. Every path with different energy left
cons Task return gets different selecting probability, so the energy of the whole
ump implemenion return network can be balance, thus can extension the living cycle of
tion ~~~~~~~~processing the network.[1
man Fig 5 Scheduling Method
5. CONCLUSION
agement
TinyOS keeps the simple FIFO array with no prior. Once Due to the special working environment and complex
when the array is empty, it turns to sleep immediately unless a geological condition, mining is a industry with high-rate of
affair awakes it. This mechanism can save the power of the accidents. With the restrains under ground, current safety
system as much as possible. This is executing with two monitoring system are not effectively enough. The
methods. First is that every instrument can stop itself by the introduction of wireless sensor network technology makes it
command 'StdControl.stop'. Secondly, HPL-Power possible to estimate the condition of mine both quantitatively
Management component will turn the processor into a low and qualitatively. So, pre-alarm can be given before accidents
cost state when it's needed through detecting the 1/0 pipe feet break out to minimize the loss of personnel and propertied as
and the controlling register. great as possible. Focus on the working environment under
Dynamic consumption management and dynamic voltage ground, this paper gives a design of mine safety mentoring-
schedule mechanism are used as the consumption saving WMSS. The software design of nodes is discussed detailed
strategy in this system. with the respect of energy effective.
Dynamic consumption management works as this: when
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