An Efficient Disaster Management System for Coal
Miners Using Sensor MANETs
Rama Murali G K Sriharsha D V
ISRO Satellite Centre EMC2
Bangalore Email: sriharshadv87@gmail.com
Email: ramamuraligk@gmail.com
Abstract—Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are self-
organized networks built up for moving objects. The
main challenges posed by MANETs simulation are their
faithful characterization and physical implementation. Logistic
difficulties, economic issues, technology limitations make
simulation the mean of choice in the validation of networking
protocols for MANETs widely adopted development of real world
technologies. It is quite interesting to bring down complexities
of MANETs in realization of their characteristics both in
simulation as well as real-time implementation by defining
MANET for coal miners tracking applications within the
geographic scenario specified. We have used wired-cum-wireless
technology with mobility in network layer, to achieve our desired
goals of coal miners tracking and monitoring. The motion of
miners is monitored across a predefined geographical area and
network capability of up to 15 miners. The focus is not only
to track the miners, but also to establish an efficient disaster
management system, in order to safeguard the lives of miners.
We have achieved the design of a prototype, by considering
a base station and one node (miner). The prototype senses
the changes in environmental conditions and warns the miner
of forth coming disaster. Multimedia information about the
mining environment can also be recorded and stored for months
through Self recording surveillance System and the recordings
is used in case of post disaster investigation. The Self Recording
Surveillance System is a combination of a camera, a passive-
infrared movement sensor, a SD-card, and a microcontroller
implementing a solid-state time-lapse recorder. It is a compact,
complete, self-contained surveillance system designed with
miners safety in mind. It can store images and send them at
the same time to the destination. Recording starts automatically
upon detecting a movement and also when command is executed.
Keywords: Mobile Ad-hoc Network, Access points, Nodes, Re-
peaters, Miners, surveillance system, sensors, Microcontrollers,
Recorders.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A. Mines
Mines-excavations under the surface of the earth, can be
classified in many categories as metal and non-metal mines,
coal mines etc. Surface mining and deep underground mining
are the two basic methods of mining. The decision of what
type of mine to construct depends on the depth of the coal
seam and the surrounding terrain. The physical and geo-
graphical complexity of tunnels in underground mines impairs
the visibility of environment and operating assets, including
human beings. Irrespective of the acuteness of locating mineral
Swarnalatha Srinivas and G. Narendra Kumar
Dept. of Electronics & Communication,
UVCE, Bangalore - 560001
Email: gnarenk@yahoo.com
though proper mining design and planning, the hazards of the
sub-terrestrial world remains unpredictable. This increases the
vulnerability of the miners. Most of the available technologies
are restricted in being reactive rather than proactive, which
means that it cannot predict an imminent disaster situation.
And, once the disaster strikes sub-terrestrially, it leaves very
little window of opportunity to control the disaster from
getting worse. To overcome the difficulties for communication
between miners, environmental monitoring, surviellance sys-
tem etc. under mines, the paper explains an efficient disaster
management system which not only monitors and tracks the
miners at each and every instant, but also helps in establishing
an efficient wireless communication system between them,
along with the most advantageous surveillance system.
B. Surveillance system
The Self Recording Surveillance System is a combination of
a VGA CMOS camera, a passive-infrared movement sensor,
a 1 GB SD-card (or bigger), and an AVR Mega32 micro-
controller implementing a solid-state time-lapse recorder. It
is a compact, complete, self-contained surveillance system
designed with miners safety and environmental conditions in
mind. It is installed in minutes, and it is affordable because
of it is built using a handful of inexpensive parts.
For most typical environments, it stores more than one
month of images at a maximum rate of a color picture
every 2 seconds (320x200 pixels, comparable to VHS-CCTV
recorders), or 3 seconds (VGA, 640x480 pixels). Recording
starts automatically upon detecting a movement. An infrared
remote control and voice-prompt menus allow easy operation,
even when the camera is concealed or installed in places
like corners. When the card is full, new images replace
automatically older ones, so the most recent snapshots are
available. To investigate the images, the card is accessed from
the controlling station and the stored images are examined. The
Self Recording Surveillance System records its files using a
standard file system (FAT16 or FAT32) and image compression
format (JPEG). Retrieval is immediate as the camera sorts the
pictures in folders according by date and time.
1) Network Simulator 2: This simulator (Figure 1) uses
C++ and OTcl scripting languages using which all the spec-
ified conditions above can be executed (Figure 2). NS is a
discrete event simulator targeted at networking research and

Fig. 1. NS-2 Implementation
Fig. 2. NS-2
provides substantial support for simulation of TCP, routing,
and multicast protocols over wired and wireless (local and
satellite) networks which is heavily used in ad-hoc networking
research as in routing protocols: AODV, DSDV, DSR, etc. NS2
is a discrete event simulator for networking research which
works at packet level. This simulator provides substantial
support to simulate bunch of Protocols like TCP, UDP, FTP,
HTTP and DSR. This software is used to simulate both wired
and wireless network.
NAM is a Tcl/TK based animation tool for viewing network
simulation traces and real world packet traces. It is mainly
intended as a companion animator to the NS simulator.
The network simulator supports TCP, UDP, HTTP, etc. pro-
tocols, traffic Models: Web Traffic, CBR, Topology Generation
tools, Visualization tools, Large validation package, Protocol
validation, Controlled experimental conditions and Low cost,
time, collaboration and complexity.
II. R ELATED W ORK
VANET [4], deals with moving nodes which are a tad
quicker referred to vehicles (nodes). But under such scenario,
the network establishment is difficult since the node switches
from one network to other rapidly.VANET system works on
the principle identification of a vehicle, which is assigned
as Mobile-IP address to a vehicle. The system tracks the
vehicle through access points, which are established at various
locations in lane or parks or in large campus. The carrier is a
navigation server that connects with multiple clients (nodes)
and is also responsible for the clients request data. The client
control panel system running on client side helps the user
for identifying current location, destination location, landmark
and the distance to be traveled. Traffic intensity of each lane
is notified through carrier access point. Shivmurthy, et al [5],
explains such a situation wherein the tracking of vehicles is
done using two simulators, Network Simulator (NS) and Sim-
ulation Urban Mobility (SUMO). The basic system concept
constitute three major components called Traffic Simulator,
Network Simulator and Application software to couple two
Simulators, for initial simulation set up and data exchange.
III. D ESIGN AND I MPLEMENTATIONS
A. Simulation of Network Scenario
The mobile nodes described so far mainly supports simu-
lation of multi-hop ad-hoc networks or wireless LANs. In ns,
routing information is generated based on he connectivity of
the topology, i.e. how nodes are connected to one another
through Links. Mobile nodes on the other hand have no
concept of links. They route packets among themselves, within
the wireless topology, using their routing protocol.
Base station here is the controlling station situated on the
earthsurface and it is wired to the access points situated under
mines at some predefined static places. The mining area is
completely installed with the MANETs environment, each
miner acting as a mobile node and access point itself being
a static node. BaseStationNode is created which plays the
role of a gateway for the wired and wireless domains. The
BaseStationNode is essentially a hybrid between a Hierar-
chical node1 (HierNode) and a MobileNode. The basestation
node is responsible for delivering packets into and out of
the wireless domain. Each wireless domain along with its
base-station would have a unique domain address assigned
to them. All packets destined to a wireless node would reach
the base-station attached to the domain of that wireless node,
who would eventually hand the packet over to the destination
(mobilenode). And mobilenodes route packets, destined to
outside their (wireless) domain, to their base-station node. The
mobilenodes in wired-cum-wireless scenario are required to
support hierarchical addressing/routing. Thus the MobileN-
ode looks exactly like the BaseStationNode. The SRNode,
however, needs to have its own hier-address since it does
not require any address demuxes and thus is not required to
support hierarchical routing. The DSDV agent on having to
forward a packet checks to see if the destination is outside
its (wireless) subnet and tries to forward the packet to its
base-station node. In case no route to base-station is found
the packet is dropped or the packet is forwarded to the next
hop towards the base-station, which is then routed towards the
wired network by base stations classifiers. The DSR agent,
on receiving a packet destined outside its subnet, sends out a
route-query for its base-station in case the route to base-station
is not known. The data packet is temporarily cached while it
waits to hear route replies from base-station. On getting a
reply the packet is provided with routing information in its
 Fig. 3. The mobile unit.
Fig. 4. The base unit.
header and sends away towards the base-station. The base-
station address demuxes routes it correctly toward the wired
network.
B. Hardware Implementation of Sensor Systems
The Hardware prototype designed has two parts. One Mo-
bile unit (Figure 3) and the other was being Base unit (Figure
4). The mobile unit which is to be fixed in the headgear
of the miner acts as the node of the MANET. The mobile
unit designed is as shown in the figure. The mobile unit will
have different types of sensors to gather the information of
environmental conditions and send to the base unit which
is fixed above the earth surface, Microcontroller to process
the information, ADC to convert the analog electrical signal
outputs of the sensors into digital signals for the proceeding
operations.
The mobile system also will have the communication equip-
ments and multimedia devices. The transceiver helps in the
communication process between miners and between miner
and the base unit operator at the controlling station.
The designed prototype has the P89V51RD2 motherboard,
which is an 8051 architecture microcontroller board on which
the various components are interfaced.
1) Hardware Implementation of Surveillance System
Recorder:: The below circuit diagram (Figure 5) sums up
the design and implementation methods we have followed
for bringing the surveillance system using PIR sensor and
coupling it with he storage media. The implementation details
are summed up here: The circuit develops around the AT
Mega 32, and most interfacing resolves to straight connections,
as all AVR I/O pins provide programmable pull-ups and
respectable output current. One notable exception is the PIR
movement sensor (Intertecs ITM256), which is a 5V part
(opposed to the rest of the circuit that works at 3.3V), and
needs an independent power regulator (IC3, an LM2936-Z5
low-dropout, low quiescent current regulator from National).
The camera module (Intertec ITCM328) connects to the UART
RX and TX pins. Communication runs at 115200 baud, thus
we selected a 7.3728 MHz crystal for exact bit timing. The
SD-CARD connects directly to the SPI port pins. The card
connector is a Yamaichi FPS009-3202.
Fig. 5. Circuit diagram.
The connector features also extra signals indicating card
insertion status and the position of the write-protect tab of the
card. We routed them to two spare I/O pins (internal pull-ups
enabled). A different kind of switch, the micro switch detect-
ing when the lid is opened, and the external trigger switch
connect in the same way to the AVR However, we selected
one of the three AVR interrupt pins for the external trigger,
in order to capture and flag automatically any transition. The
same applies to the PIR input too. The latter pin comes from a
Vishay TSOP34836 infrared receiver IC. Four LEDs showing
device status take half of the port A. A spare bit on port C
drives the relay output by means of the typical transistor &
diode network.
IV. R ESULTS
The snapshots of the simulated environment comprising
of nodes (miners), access points and base station are shown
(Figure 6). The small circles indicate the nodes of the network
environment, the access point and base station are shown in
hexagons. The circles around the nodes explain the coverage
areas of the individual nodes. The nodes are designed to
be in continuous motion, communicating with the neighbors.
Each node transfers the information about its positions (in
terms of Cartesian coordinates) to the base station every
instant(Figure 7). The miners (nodes) are identified at the base
station by the unique IP address. The controlling station gives
out the warning signals as well as other required information
through the access point. The access points act as repeaters,
increasing the signal strength in the mining environment. The
snapshots are taken from the Network animator. Each and
every node here is being tracked and the packet exchange
between miners and the base station are shown(Figure 8)s.
The node 4, 11, and 10 perfectly explains the packet exchange,
acknowledgements exchange(Figure 9) and how the safety of
miners is achieved(Figure 10).
MANET simulations were carried out in a topological area
of 100mx100m. Under this area include 15 to 50 miners
 Fig. 6. Initial position.

Fig. 8. Access point monitoring Node 4.

Fig. 7. Node 4 sending data to access point.

represented as nodes and each has a wireless IP address Fig. 9. Node 4 moving out of range of Access Point.
with a mobility pattern randomly designed.The data exchange
between the nodes and the access points is shown in simulation
results(Figure 11). This area simulated under a base station and
various access points. Mobile Host that moves to other domain
communicates through Mobile IP. DSDV Ad-Hoc network
protocol is used for Routing Mobile Hosts/miners that sits on
each access points. The Mobile Hosts/miners that form Ad-
Hoc Network are monitored/tracked by DSDV and details are
viewed in Network Simulator NS2. The mobility of Mobile
Hosts is varied in the range of 0m/s to 1m/s.
The work of installing sensors and started with pressure and
temperature sensors is started and the result was successful.
The Miners Tracking in a defined geographical area was
logged into a separate information file for 15 miners. A
separate log file was created in DSDV routing file to monitor
Mobile hosts changing access points This file details includes
Miners IP address, time instant at which movement detected
and its locations. In the mobility observation shown are the Fig. 10. Node 4 is warned and is back in coverage area.
screen shots of the nodes (miners) in motion as they take
random path and their mobility can be seen. Here each node
is represented by a circle, access points and base station by can be analyzed using wireless trace file. The screen shots
a hexagon. The big circles around nodes indicate their radio highlight how each miner and access points are represented,
range by default 100m is used for each node. The path taken their position with respect to base-station.

Fig. 11. A plot of movement of node 4
Fig. 12. The information transfer is in half duplex mode.
V. R ESULTS OF H ARDWARE S YSTEMS
The prototype that designed has two units-one mobile unit
and one base unit. Only one node is considered for the
hardware prototype in initial stage. In actual scenario, every
node is given its own IP address and the base station keeps
on receiving the signals from all the nodes.
Getting the information(Figure 12), it updates the log file
about the location of the miner, the surrounding conditions
of the particular miner is displayed. Based on the conditions
received, the base unit decides which miner has to be warned
and to that miner having the particular IP address, from
which dangerous conditions are being monitored, the warning
signals are sent. If the miner to which the warnings has to
be sent is out of the network coverage area, the network
sends the signals to the destined miner via the neighboring
miner as he still in the network area of the lost miner. The
controller can also receive and send the voice signals from
the miners and also some external warning signals if needed.
The designed hardware unit efficiently transmits and receives
to a range of 100 mts. The conditions considered are above
the earth surface, normal environmental conditions as initial
work. The sensors installed are pressure and temperature as
the microcontroller we used has limited number of interrupts.
Depending on the microcontroller used, the number of sensors
can be increased thereby increasing the monitoring efficiency.
As the network protocol used being DSDV the loss of data is
minimal and efficient communications links are established.
Fig. 13. Ceiling view of a room captured by the Self Recording Surveillance
System Using PIR Sensor.
The power loss is made much minimum by making the
communication wired till the access points from the base
station.
The photo (Figure 13) above shows the ceiling view of
one of the living-room captured by the SELF RECORDING
SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM USING PIR SENSOR. Mileage
can vary, but you should be able to get about 50,000 frames at
320x200 (like the one below), or 25,000 at 640x480, using a
1 GB card. This corresponds to more than 40 hours of overall
recording.
Actual time span is much more than that. Likely, the best
location for the camera is in the foyer, where people stand
just a few minutes per day. In our case; just 20 minutes on
average, giving an impressive 120 days of storage capacity.
The SELF RECORDING SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM US-
ING PIR SENSOR fulfills all our needs, but we know from
experience that it would be presumptuous to consider it a
finished product. Extensive testing, like verification against
the most commonly available cards and PC readers, would
be a huge task. Nonetheless, its potential should be easy to
appreciate, even in this homemade incarnation.
The design is unquestionably useful. We hope people will
also like the design philosophy. The SELF RECORDING
SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM USING PIR SENSOR merges
two mainstream technologies flash memory and image sensors
to create something new and practical. The result is a very
flexible concept: after you play some time with the prototype,
it is really easy to find applications you havent thought before.
This design is definitely inexpensive. It takes advantage
from mass-produced components to generate an extremely
cost-effective solution. The price of the most expensive part,
the SD-card, is dropping every day, thanks to the booming
markets of music players and digital cameras. The same
applies to the camera module, which comes from the mobile
telephony market. Compared to standard video surveillance
equipment, the savings are striking, and more than balancing
for the reduced frame rate or resolution. Other optimizations
are more serious. Replacing the LCD with a voice interface is
both cost-effective and optimal from a ease-of-use perspective.
The choice of the Mega32 processor is a perfect fit. It handles
easily its workload, and almost all its hardware features are
used. Also the sizes of FLASH and RAM are just right for
the application.
VI. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
In this paper we try to bring out the good use of ad-
hoc networks in the field of mine monitoring. It has become
a challenge for the present day technology to avoid the
disasters occurring during mining. The system not only tracks
a particular node but also keeps its trace at all instants of time.
We intend to incorporate different types of sensors like
humidity sensor, suitable gas detectors and sensors thereby
increasing the monitoring efficiency. Along with these sensors,
our work intends to achieve the system working even though
the power fails for very long duration. We also intend to bring
out the model in the form of a chip, which eases problems of
bulkiness and large area.
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