1、Energy Efficient Clustering Protocol for EarlyWarning System for Miners Safety in Coal MinesK. A. Unnikrishna Menon, Deepa Maria, Hemalatha ThirugnanamAmrita Centre for W ireless Networks and ApplicationAmrita Vi shwa Vidyapeetham, AmritapuriEmail:kaumenonam.amrita.edu,deepamaria89,hemalathaam.amrit
2、a.eduAbstract: Early detection of spontaneous explosions in coal mines can be made possible by monitoring the concentration of toxic gases such as Carbon monoxide (CO), Methane (CH4) and Hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Methane gas detection is very important for outburst prediction. In order to protect peop
3、le and to avoid destructive sequence, it is necessary to design a system that can predict methane outburst in coal mines. In order to improve the reliability of gas monitoring in coal mine, we design a wireless sensor network (WSN) with gas sensors. The wireless sensor network is suitable for toxic
4、gas monitoring in the severe environment of underground coal mines. Semiconductor type methane sensor having low power consumption and high sensitivity is used in the proposed system. The chain type clustering of low power sensor nodes along with data aggregation is devised to optimize the power con
5、sumption by the WSN. Additional feature of minimum data transmission and state transitions between listening, sleeping and transmitting modes in sensor nodes also guarantee power optimization.1.INTRODUCTIONMining industry is susceptible to various types of disasters which lead to heavy loss of human
6、 lives,property and infrastructure. 1 The issue of safety in the mines is still unsolved almost all over the world. There are a number of risk factors involved in the underground coal mines like faulting, mine explosions, mine fires, suffocation by the poisonous gases formed, mine inundations (flood
7、ing from water table), mine cave-ins or roof falls and seismic changes (due to natural earthquakes or due to mining operations). As per survey, it was seen that the mine explosions are the main cause for majority of the underground mine accidents. The main cause for mine explosions is the presence o
8、f toxic methane gas in an insufficient oxygen environment. The proposed system aims at developing an advanced power efficient early warning system to safeguard the miners from high exposure to the toxic methane gas.An early-warning system must be established so as to send signals before a disaster h
9、appens. Along with the technology for an early-warning system, the proposed system helps to decrease the rate of accidents and to improve the emergency safety measures. Existing safety systems use a wired infrastructure which could get destroyed during some disasters, power failure or propagation ha
10、zards which will lead to an inefficient system, necessitating deployment of a wireless sensor network. The objective is to develop a power optimized and efficient wireless sensor network to sense the presence of toxic methane gas and to warn the monitoring station about the increase in gas concentra
11、tion. Light, compact, low cost and powerefficient wireless sensor nodes substitute the traditional wired, heavy and fixed monitoring equipment and leads to faster, easier and large-scale deployments in a harsh and sophisticated environment. The system can thus reduce the chances of mine explosions a
12、nd its higher impact on the miners by providing a warning before the hazard happens.Wireless sensor networks have attracted more and more research interest in coal mine applications for their advantages of self organization, low cost and high reliability. Sensor networks are used in various applicat
13、ions mainly due to the simplicity and efficiency. WSN is a combination of sensor technology, embedded systems and wireless communications. It has been used in monitoring, data collection of environmental parameters and transmitted to terminals by selforganizing wireless networks with relay method. W
14、SN consists of many tiny sensor nodes with wireless transmission ability and computational ability. The distance among nodes of WSN is always very short. It uses multi-hop wireless communication for long distance applications. WSN nodes have the following fundamental functions: data collection of pa
15、rameters, data processing and data transmission. Combining WSN with appropriate communication technology is a perfect scheme for mine emergency communication. The monitoring system for mine safety was designed to cater the problems faced by miners and to monitor various environmental parameters in t
16、he coal mines.2.RELATED WORKAlthough there are a number of mine monitoring systems, only a few of them make use of wireless communication technology. Monitoring systems mainly use the conventional wired infrastructure so as to ensure minimum packet loss. There are many issues like explosions, disasters like earthquakes and flooding to hamper the wired infrastructure and which destroy the communication links underground. Also, when the mining process extend,
