Design of Embedded Wireless System for Vehicle Monitoring – A Case of TRB Iron Ore Mines

Abstract

In today’s era, every physical object such as building, vehicles and electronic devices communicates through internet. Industries are innovating to improve management, safety and productivity. The concern for safety becomes more important when it comes to heavy machinery, equipment with moving parts since threat to human life is involved. One of such industry is mining where heavy earth moving machineries are working at hazardous location. In mines effective utilization of vehicle and safety of workers is a challenging task. We use vehicle monitoring system to make vehicle management easy and to increase the safety of workers in mining area. Vehicle tracking consist of GPS, GSM/GPRS wireless technology and controller. In Vehicle monitoring System, Vehicle tracking device receives position data i.e. longitude, latitude, speed through GPS receiver and transfer that acquired data to the web server through wireless network. Microcontroller is used as host to the other devices which receives data from GPS, process data to get required information and transmit data to server through GSM/GPRS. A person can monitor position of vehicle, past tracking record of vehicle improving management at the mine resulting in increased profit and improved productivity.
Standard cellular network based conventional VTS (vehicle tracking system) is inefficient in mines because their geographical structure hinders the network coverage. A local wireless network is created to monitor vehicle movement in mining area. We created Personal Area Network (PAN) using Xbee pro S2B and a system which monitors vehicles and provides communication channel to the driver. An Embedded Wireless System is designed using the above mentioned techniques and successfully installed at TRB Iron Ore Mines - Tensa, Sundergarh