Company
president Bill Hensler calls VARIS the "leading supplier
of underground communications for the coal mining industry
in the United States", with 46 current installations
at underground operations.
While the company also works in rock mines, underground government facilities
and tunnels, Hensler said its work with VARIS in the underground coal sector
is like no other and that the products they offer are unique, "giving us
something that no one has before".
"In the olden days,
a cable could be cut, maybe, five miles into the mine – if
you wanted to know where it was cut, you would have to go
and manually search five miles of cable. It would take days," he
said, as he discussed the company's leaky feeder system,
with which he has worked heavily with VARIS engineering manager
Anita Masuskapoe.
"Now you can go to
your computer every morning and look at your radius from
underground and see exactly what's going on everywhere with
every amplifier and every voltage level," he said, adding
that the set-up is basically a full-scale computer network
for operations.
The leaky feeder can also
be used as an Ethernet cable, allowing for the advantage
of comprehensive communication and monitoring and ability
to have a"highway" of Information.
"That's real important
now for safety and productivity, [to] know what these multi-million
dollar machines are doing; and it's important to get that
information outside [to the surface]," Hensler said.
To bring a full understanding,
he explained it this way: "We are taking a cable network
head in [CNTS, or cable modem termination system], cable
modems and basically using this hardware [and] providing
Ethernet network access underground over the leaky feeder
network."
Both Hensler and Masuskapoe
said that because the technology is designed especially for
underground use, the issues in implementation and development
have been non-existent.
Another of the company's
R&D developments now taking centre stage is its Smart
Tag location and resource tracking software, which can also
be interfaced with the information highway of a mine. According
to Hensler, each tag is
equipped with four antennas to check multiple directions
with an approximate 100-foot range, especially important
at crossroads and in areas where multiple workers and machines
are located.
"The key advantages
of Smart Com is that it runs over existing infrastructure,
as opposed to having to install the fibre all the way underground
to get a network connection," Masuskapoe said, adding
that Smart Com and Smart tag are not mutually exclusive and
that their specifications for installation depends on the
operation and its current infrastructure.
With the capacity for gas
monitoring, cameras, or any other Ethernet-compatible device
in addition to communication, the developments VARIS and
Wholesale Mine Supply have collaborated on to bring to the
industry are ones which the companies said have not been
previously available and which they hope will bring mine
communications to the next level.
