Mines need a lot of machinery and equipment for excavation, transportation, lifting, and production assistance. In the 4G era, many devices cannot be connected to the Internet for remote control due to limited Internet speed and connections, so workers have to work underground. The intensity of labor is great, and improper operations tend to cause perils. In addition, with the disappearance of China’s demographic dividend and people’s concern about the danger of working underground, more and more people are unwilling to work underground. The difficulty of recruiting and employing workers in coal mines has become a practical problem faced by enterprises.

In the past, there are several of difficulties for underground equipment to access the network. Regarding Wi-Fi Transmission, it has poor anti-interference performance、limited coverage and weak penetration. Besides, the connection between equipment is easy to disrupt. If we use Wired Connections, the underground topography is too complex to make wiring.

In the 5G era, the extensive connectivity, large bandwidth and ultra-low latency of 5G networks meet the safety and performance requirements of underground coal mines. Now coal mine 5G has officially gone commercial. In China, FUHUAYUQI and China Unicom together have finished the construction of Shanxi Coking Coal Group’s Pangpangta Coal Mine 5G System,150 5G base stations are deployed. The entire coal mine 5G communication system adopts the 5G CPE with the SIMCom 5G module SIM8200EA-M2, which helps many underground devices connect to the 5G base stations and realize stable data connections.

Through the 5G CPE (with the built-in SIMCom 5G module SIM8200EA-M2), many underground devices like intelligent patrol robots, coal mine robots, automatic driving, fully mechanized mining equipment and other coal mine equipment systems can get high-speed 5G connections. Underground voice, video and data are carried by one network and various intelligent operating system information is transmitted by one network. Data on underground operations can be transmitted back to the dispatching center on the ground in real time. The dispatchers can watch the underground excavation, transportation and maintenance in real time on the big screen. Real-time communication between the staff underground and the staff on the ground is realized, effectively improving safety and production efficiency.

5G is the key driving force for the new round of evolution toward intelligent unmanned coal mines. In the future, with the further maturity of 5G networks and IoT technology, mines will realize unmanned operations in excavation, tunneling, dangerous places, large equipment and even the entire mine, forming intelligent unmanned mines.