The Mining Industry of the Future

The mining industry is rapidly adopting automation and incorporating digital technologies into its operations. These digital applications require network connectivity suited to mission-critical business operations and industrial-grade wireless mobile communications for their operators.

Over the past decade, several wireless connectivity solutions have been deployed, such as Wi-Fi, but their capabilities have become limited. 4.9G/LTE mobile technology is available for private wireless networks, is easy to install, maintain, and expand, and meets the requirements of the most demanding digital mining applications.

The results of digital transformation and automation can be substantial. Advances in technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and extended reality (XR) will enable mining companies to optimize decision-making, automate processes, and, over time, replace all manual operations with autonomous systems.

To take full advantage of these technologies and digital applications, mining companies need high-performance wireless connectivity. However, many mines still rely on legacy networks that were not built to meet the demands of ultra-broadband and mission-critical use cases.

Mining Today

Mining companies, which often operate in remote and challenging environments, must make significant efforts to comply with strict environmental and worker safety regulations. The industry is pursuing a strategy of extreme autonomy, in which all manual equipment -- such as excavators, haul trucks, crushers, and trains -- will eventually be replaced by their automated counterparts.

The appeal of an automated application is not always related to cost savings; an autonomous haul truck is not significantly cheaper than one with a driver. While mining companies are always interested in reducing the cost per ton, they also focus on predictability and operational continuity. Accidents, delays, and handling errors tend to be more common with human drivers and also result in significant financial losses.

Data collected from a large number of underground and aerial sensors would allow miners to have situational awareness across the entire mine, railway, and port, in near real time, identifying potential bottlenecks at each step of the process. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence, miners could dynamically track assets and dispatch them on demand.

The Key to Digital Transformation in Mining

There is one essential ingredient for the success of digitalization in mines: industrial, homogeneous wireless connectivity. Without it, most of these technologies would not reach their full potential or, in some cases, could not be deployed at all.

Current IT wireless network technologies, such as Wi-Fi and WiMax, are not designed for critical connectivity at an industrial scale. Wi-Fi was designed for best-effort local area networks in the office or home, for exchanging emails and browsing the internet. These technologies have been adapted in the past for industrial applications with limited results.

In recent years, Nokia has led the way in making critical wireless networks available to enterprises through industrial-grade private wireless solutions that comply with 3GPP standards.

Wireless access points, called cellular base stations (BTS), are available in both outdoor and indoor versions and can support up to 800 users in active communication per small cell and many more in the case of macro cells. Nokia's industrial wireless solution can scale from very small to very large field operations, with coverage of up to 400,000 km2 outdoors and 20 km2 indoors. They can be connected via CAT cables (existing or new), PON cabling, or microwave links.

Network access and priority/performance parameters are controlled by the mine. Defined applications, machines, sensors, and workers have access and are guaranteed the appropriate level of service. Both LTE and 5G support network slicing, allowing specific network resources to be reserved for particular applications.

This application-centric approach is achieved by combining LTE with IP/MPLS as the foundation of the entire network. For example, autonomous haul trucks can be assigned a specific network segment, TETRA communications another, and IoT sensors a third. This ensures that no other application running on the network can compete for those bandwidth resources.

The digital transformation of mining is advancing rapidly. There is a strong movement among mining companies to adopt automation. The first applications of autonomous technologies have already delivered productivity, predictability, and safety improvements for workers.

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