Rajant Corporation, the exclusive provider of Kinetic Mesh® wireless networks, is presenting its mobile broadband mesh capabilities for mining. Rajant, with long-standing distribution partner Duxbury, is demonstrating how Rajant is delivering fully mobile, mission-critical data, video, and voice communications to the mining industry. Both companies are at Mining Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa, from Monday, February 3rd until Thursday, February 6th, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), Booth 614.
The shape, depth, and configuration of mines are continually changing as extraction occurs. Equipment and infrastructure must be moved almost daily away from new blast zones, which means network coverage must frequently shift too. This creates a problem for traditional wireless networks that operate from fixed infrastructure, such as Wi-Fi Mesh, Point-to-Multi-Point, and LTE. Massive towers or fiber-connected base units require significant effort to relocate, and hours of manual configuration to redeploy once they have been moved. The costliest part is the coverage impact that occurs during these transitions; with the network down, the mine cannot run the real-time applications necessary to maintain 24/7 productivity and site-wide worker safety.
Enter the solution offered by Rajant Corporation and its channel partner Duxbury Networking.
Rajant provides a simple but robust solution to modify or expand network coverage dynamically as the mine footprint evolves. The unique nature of our Kinetic Mesh® architecture allows open-pit operations to easily introduce, relocate, or remove network infrastructure – without causing any network downtime – to deliver highly adaptable coverage and continuous connectivity.
All network nodes can be mobile and create a mesh between moving equipment. Lightweight BreadCrumb® nodes work peer-to-peer to form a multi-radio Kinetic Mesh network. These nodes can be deployed on fixed infrastructure or moving assets such as trucks and shovels, uniquely enabling vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications between mobile equipment.
Once configured for the mesh, if coverage needs to be shifted, the compact nodes can be easily relocated and will instantly reconnect to begin meshing with nearby nodes. Multi-radio, multi-frequency redundancy delivers mission-critical reliability. BreadCrumbs can hold multiple connections over multiple frequencies simultaneously, creating hundreds of potential paths over which to direct traffic.
Rajant’s InstaMesh® networking protocol works in real-time to select the fastest path or paths for delivery. If a path becomes unavailable or blocked, InstaMesh will dynamically route communications via the next-best available path. That means nodes can be relocated without causing any downtime, and interference or signal blockage caused by the changing open-pit environment will not compromise network performance.
Representing Rajant at Mining Indaba are Chris Mason, Vice President of Sales for EMEA, and Karel Venter, Sales Engineer for EMEA. Joining Rajant is Duxbury Networking, a specialist distributor of technology infrastructure and technical expertise in wireless solutions for the African continent.