Propagation Features of Visible Light Communication in Underground Mining Environments

Abstract

Due to the problems that radio-frequency technology presents in hostile environments, especially in mining environments, other forms of more robust as well as efficient communication have been explored in recent years. Among these, Visible Light Communication (VLC) can be highlighted. In this work, the analysis of a VLC system applied to underground mining (UM) environments is presented. This scheme supports communication and lighting at the same time. This VLC study is done based on the mathematical models of optical transmitters, optical receivers, channel model, and propagation model. In addition, two UM scenarios are exposed, which are tested by numerical simulations. In particular, characteristics of the VLC channel such as gain, impulse response, and reception power are obtained, together with the fulfillment of the necessary lighting parameters in the mining scenarios. As a consequence, we observe that VLC systems comply with the lighting standards in UM environments and have favorable characteristics for reliable communication within these noisy environments.