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
recent years. Many shortages exist in mine safety systems
supported by current technologies. The features of wireless
sensor network determined that it well adapts the special needs

of the environment monitoring. This paper presents the design of

a mine safety system based on wireless sensor network which is
called WMSS. Considering the unsafe factors under the mine, a
sensor network was designed which can gather and analyze the

concentration of gas under the mine. Thus, a system for realtime monitoring the environment under the mine is
accomplished, and it can also provide the pre-warning for the
fire. This paper discussed the components of the system, the
topology of the network, hardware and software of the nodes.
The software design of the operating system is discussed detailed
from the aspect of energy efficient.
Index Terms

monitoring; TinyOS.

wireless sensor network (WSN); mine safety;

1. INTRODUCTION
Mine resource is one of the most important parts of the
natural resource which is concerned by every country in the
Hoevroffscrt
nie
security innmnn
world. However, the issue
mining iSsaan unfixed
problem for all the countries. To monitor the mine is the way
to ensure the security of it. But how to build an effective
monitoring system causes much work and effort. *
2. WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

th.su~
world.~~~~~~~~~~

Under the improvement of sensor and computer network

technologies, wireless sensor network (WSN) has been
improved quickly recently. It has already become a hot
research point in the field of information technique. WSN has
the features of self-organized, flexible configuration, easy
expansion. 1-] It specially fits the environment which is
danger and we can not easily get in touch with. Under those
conditions, we can deploy the nodes by tools such as
airplanes. Then, the nodes will self-organize into a network,
collect, process and transmit the monitoring information.
Thus, WSN can be used in the projects of forest fire
preventing, habitat monitoring of living things, environment
monitoring, medical watching, and etc.
Sensors, objects and the observers are the basic three
facts of sensor network. By using wireless communication,
sensors can cooperatively sense, collect, process and
announce the information with other nodes or observers,

3. MINE SAFETY MONITORING SYSTEM

Orebody under the ground is the main object in mining.

The environment is quite complex under the ground; there are
geological faults around the orebody; the five systems for
gathering, tunneling, airing, electro-mechanical and transport
are deployed under the ground, the whole production is
threatened by gas, carbon monoxide, coal dust, water flood,
static electricity, airy and etc. The traditional method in China
mostly depends on human beings. It's not so effective so new
methods are expected. The system should include the
following functions: predict of accident, pre-alarming and
rescue assistant.
Among the factors which influence the mine safety, the
concentration of gas is one of the most important sign. In
cretsft oioigsses most
otgssnosue
o
sensors used for
cuffrenttake
safety
systems,
mine
wiremonitoring
communication
method, gas
such as optic fiber,
electric cable or others. But, it has essential defect; the
deploym en of lineis. quite c exso thecot of
deployment an m ai nis high;
ccdt doo
maintain iS high; as sowhe
when accident
~~~deployment and
happen, the cable is always damaged completed, it can not
supply any information since then.
Wireless sensor network is introduced into mine
monitoring system here. Various kinds of sensors for
particular use collect the real-time information under ground;
information which is processed by embedded system then
transmit through wireless network; all the collected
information finally go to the monitoring end for managers to
judge the condition. This method can effectively
counterbalance the defect of wire equipments. Besides, it is
cheap, convenient, high-reliability and easy-modification.
This paper gives the design of an system which is called
WMSS (WSN Based Mine Safety System) for the particular
use of mine safety monitoring.
4. WMSS SYSTEM
4.1. WMSS system architecture
The statistical data indicates that 7000 of the mine safety
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

Some or all the nodes in WSN may move in the network, so

the topology framework keeps changing as the nodes moves.
WSN has the following features: limited hardware resources,
limited power, center less, self-organize, multi-jump router
and dynamic topology framework.

148

works mainly on the monitoring and pre-alarming of gas

accidents. The system contains three main functions. One is
the real-time environment data collecting, processing and
transmission. Another is the pre-alarming function if it is in
danger. The last function is the rescue assistant after the
accident happens, history data can be used to analysis the
possible reasons.
Data

gathering
system
node

possible______reasons._____
Data
Monitoring
center
system
monitoring

processing
system
controlling
machine
Wireless
communication
-

system

Wire
communication

Fig 1 The Suh systems of WMSS

minimum covering, that means use the minimum nodes but

ensure the whole region can be monitored. Based on this,
some redundant nodes are introduced in the region with
complicated topography and bad condition considering of the
robust of the whole system.
4.3. Abbreviations andAcronyms
There two kinds of nodes with different use in this
system. But they have the similar hardware components
concluding sensor module, process module, wireless
communication module and power, as fig 3 shows 4]. The
sensor module use gas sensors, the process module use the
micro embedded processor from ATMEL, the wireless
communication module use 2.4GHZ wireless communication
method and batteries are mostly used for power supplying. As
there is particular requirements for electric under ground, so

The system is consisted by three sub-systems: the data

collecting sub-system, the data processing sub-system and the

monitoring sub-system. The data collecting system contains

the sensor nodes and the wireless communication parts, using
for real-time gas concentration under ground monitoring. The
collecting nodes are divided into two parts, movable nodes
nodes Th
The movabe nodes are
and staticn
r responsible
and
stti
oh
the
epnil for
.noes
of
information
within its region and transmit the
collecting
information with other nodes; the statistic nodes are used for
the summarizing of the region data and then transmit the
summarized data to the main controlling system above
ground. The data processing system contains the main
controlling computer above ground and wire communication
network using for the gathering, processing storing and
transmitting of the information from all the lanes. The main
controlling computer then transmits the final data to remote
monitoring system. Remote monitoring system provides well
man-machine interface. It stores the information received and
show it in web way to the users.
4.2. topology architecture of WMSS
In wireless sensor network, all the nodes are deployed
freely among the monitoring region; the nodes compose the
network by self-organization. WMSS system topology
architecture is given as figure 2 shows. It is designed for the
particular environment under mine according to the traditional

moal.oe

~~ ~

WSN

Controlling

communication

module

module

arn

po

AC DC
_

Energyproidingmodule

Fig 3 amewor of the node

we can only use battery as power for the nodes which are in
the working region; however, wire electric resource can be
used as power where the nodes are close to the ground to

use aowe whrehnou

insure long-tme working.

4.4. software designfor WMSS
As the supporting technology for wireless sensor

networks, operating system must satisfy the special

technological need brings by WSN. In order to achieve the
gain of high-efficiency and flexible, it should be much smaller
than traditional operating systems but to make the most of the
hardware devices at the same time. There are two outstanding
features of a signal node in WSN; one is the concurrency,
there may be several processors which need to be response, so
the operating system should deal with the condition
effectively; the other is that it requires the operating system to
support the applications as the interface of software and
hardware.

jc

sensor
---------------------

ground

machine

Wireless

Processing

Sensor
module

--

CDH
cip

Radio

-----------------------

ion

CD

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~CD

Hardware driver
nodabe

Fig2

noxde

Fig 4 . Architecture of Software Design

Architecture of WMSS

architecture. Movable nodes are deployed in the working side

under ground, while statistic nodes are placed in the wall of
lanes. The deployment of nodes satisfied the principle of
149

According to the features of WSN, the design of operating

system for WSN should meets for some demands: small
account of code, modularize, low consumption, erupt
oprbltanrbu. '
oprbltanrbu.

TinyOS (Tiny Micro Threading Operating System) is an

open source embedded operating system. The component
based architecture can be quickly applied into various
applications. As TinyOS has been designed modular, the core
program is very small; it can run on the nodes with limited
storage resource effectively and do homologous work.
Because of the ripe technology for WSN, TinyOS is chose as
the operating system for nodes. Some modifiers will be done
to the core in order to fit the concrete situations. The software
systems of nodes compose of operating system core and
application program interface. Figure 5 gives the architecture
of the software system for nodes. The bottom layer of the
operating system contains all the driven programs for the
hardware instruments on the nodes; it also provides the
implement method of simple but high effective scheduling
mechanism, interrupt processing, consumption and
communications protocols for higher layers.
4.4.1. scheduling mechanism
TinyOS is affaire-driven with two-grade scheduling: task
and hardware affair. Task is the kind of functions which can
be interrupting. Once a task is scheduling, other tasks can not
interrupt it. But the hardware affair which is used to response
the hardware interruption can rush to seize the processor.
TinyOS keeps a task scheduling array with the simple
algorithm of first in first out. The scheduling process is given
by figure 5. Once if the task array is empty, the system turns
to a mode with extremely low consumption. The daily gas
concentration detection is set as task while the pre-alarm is set
as the affair.
Task queue
awaking
Taskl
scheduling
Interrupt4.4.
2.
Taskn
\
li +
return
cons
Task
ump implemenion return
tion

man

~~~~~~~~processing

Fig 5 Scheduling Method

important. If the strategy is not suitable, it can cause more

consumption instead of save.
The principle of dynamic voltage scheduling is as
follows: when the computing load is low, the processor
descends its working voltage and frequency to save the
energy[20].
4.4.3. communication protocols
The consumption of communication of a sensor node is
in a very large rate, the energy saving strategy has much to do
with the communication protocols. The normal energy saving
strategy of communication module is decreasing
communication discharge, adding dormancy time, multi-skip
short-distance method and router selecting.
M\AC protocol deals with the using of communication
road and the conflict caused by information broadcasting from
neighboring nodes. In fact, MAC concerns mainly on energy
efficiency problem in WSN. S-MAC is chosen as the M\AC
protocol as the nodes' protocol in the system. During the
broadcasting of data, the nodes which are neither the
dispatcher nor the receiver turn to sleep. When they are
wakening up, they broadcast their data and receive the very
data for them. The dispatching and receiving nodes pick the
RTS and CTS mechanism to occupy the information road so
that conflict can be less. P]
Routing protocol not only concerns on consumption of
a signal node but also concerns on balance consumption of the
whole network. WSN is data centered; the nodes in the
network are node addressed according to a unified method.
The selecting of the way is not based on the address of nodes,
but according to the interested data. Energy multi-path routing
protocol is picked. It builds many paths between the original
node and aim node. Then the data transmits in one path
according to the consumption of communication and the
\energy left in the node. Every path with different energy left
gets different selecting probability, so the energy of the whole
network can be balance, thus can extension the living cycle of
the network.[1

5. CONCLUSION

agement
TinyOS keeps the simple FIFO array with no prior. Once
when the array is empty, it turns to sleep immediately unless a
affair awakes it. This mechanism can save the power of the
system as much as possible. This is executing with two
methods. First is that every instrument can stop itself by the
command
'StdControl.stop'.
Secondly, HPL-Power
Management component will turn the processor into a low
cost state when it's needed through detecting the 1/0 pipe feet
and the controlling register.
Dynamic consumption management and dynamic voltage
schedule mechanism are used as the consumption saving
strategy in this system.
Dynamic consumption management works as this: when
there are no interested affairs, some modules are free, and

a industry with high-rate of

accidents. With the restrains under ground, current safety
monitoring system are not effectively enough. The
introduction of wireless sensor network technology makes it
possible to estimate the condition of mine both quantitatively
and qualitatively. So, pre-alarm can be given before accidents
break out to minimize the loss of personnel and propertied as
great as possible. Focus on the working environment under
ground, this paper gives a design of mine safety mentoringWMSS. The software design of nodes is discussed detailed
with the respect of energy effective.

However the inverting processor can also cost some power as

well with some delay, so the inverting strategy iS also very

[2] H. Edgar, "Wireless sensor networks: architectures and protocols",

then they are turned into a low cost state or turned off.

Due to the special working environment and complex

geological condition, mining is

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