According to Australian researchers, they have developed an industrial long-range wi-fi system that is ideally suited for usage in underground mines and a variety of other locations.
The research is conducted at the University of Sydney’s Centre for the Internet of Things and Telecommunications. It was funded by an $800,000 grant from the NSW Physical Sciences Fund and will be commercialized over the next two years by Roebuck, an IoT firm that mostly works in the mining sector.
The wi-fi technology expanded signal range “as far as several kilometres down,” which might be valuable for remote operation of sensitive mining equipment. According to the researchers, the device might also be beneficial in “airports, shopping malls, university campuses, and vast industrial or agricultural environments.”
Our system is the world’s first long-range high-rate wi-fi system that is compatible with conventional wi-fi and supports both mobile and multiple-access terminals,” said project leader Professor Yonghui Li in a statement. “It offers a cost-effective solution and opens up new avenues for real-time surveillance, picture and data transfer, all while ensuring minimal latency.”
The system, according to Li, “combined new protocols with off-the-shelf wi-fi chips, allowing them to be utilised with current wi-fi infrastructure.”
“Adaptation of current wi-fi systems is important to our approach since there is billions of dollars of wi-fi infrastructure already installed in underground mines throughout the world,” Li explained. Professor Branka Vucetic, project co-leader, added that present short-range technologies “just do not satisfy the needs of up-and-coming IoT applications” in industrial settings.
“Large-area coverage is often achieved through mesh networks – which serve to extend the range of wireless networks – with a high number of nodes and relay hops, which causes congestion and significant delay,” Vucetic explained.
