Mining Contract: Develop a Means to Model Network Performance Using Network Simulation Tools

Contract Status & Impact

This contract is complete.

 No final report was generated from this contract, but a related publication is available below. A new agreement has been entered into with NIST to continue working on the modeling and simulation tools and to provide related technical support.

This contract was funded as part of an interagency agreement program, which provides a formal means for federal government agencies to share and further technology that could apply to and benefit mine safety and health. OMSHR identifies other government agencies with the knowledge, skills, and abilities relevant to a health and safety gap and works collaboratively with these agencies to identify the type of technology solution desired and to determine specifications for this technology.

Under this contract, NIST demonstrated the proposed modeling and simulations tools for underground communications networks and reported on the performance of a simulated MF and UHF mesh networking communications system. Some performance issues such as propagation delay, package routing, and antenna orientation were clarified or identified. The overhead and broadcast issues regarding network layer routing protocols were identified. The report provided a detailed description of the simulation process and the results with a typical example of the MF-UHF Kutta system.

The following publication describes a simulation tool for modeling performance of a medium frequency mesh network that was developed under this contract. Copies of this publication may also be ordered by sending a request to mining@cdc.gov.

Simulation of a Medium Frequency Mesh Network for Communications in Underground Coal Mines
Souryal-M, Valoit-FA, Guo-H, Moayeri-N, Damiano-NW; Snyder-DP | in Proc. IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) Annual Meeting, Oct.3-7, 2010