Palacios Játiva Pablo, Azurdia-Meza Cesar A, Sánchez Iván, Zabala-Blanco David, Dehghan Firoozabadi Ali, Soto Ismael, Seguel Fabian
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago 8370451, Chile.
Escuela de Informática y Telecomunicaciones, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago 8370190, Chile.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Mar 24;22(7):2483. doi: 10.3390/s22072483.
Underground Mining (UM) is a hostile industry that generally requires a wireless communication system as a cross-cutting axis for its optimal operation. Therefore, in the last five years, it has been shown that, in addition to radio-frequency-based communication links, wireless optical communications, such as Visible Light Communication (VLC), can be applied to UM environments. The application of VLC systems in underground mines, known as UM-VLC, must take into account the unique physical features of underground mines. Among the physical phenomena found in underground mines, the most important ones are the positioning of optical transmitters and receivers, irregular walls, shadowing, and a typical phenomenon found in tunnels known as scattering, which is caused by the atmosphere and dust particles. Consequently, it is necessary to use proper dust particle distribution models consistent with these scenarios to describe the scattering phenomenon in a coherent way in order to design realistic UM-VLC systems with better performance. Therefore, in this article, we present an in-depth study of the interaction of optical links with dust particles suspended in the UM environment and the atmosphere. In addition, we analytically derived a hemispherical 3D dust particle distribution model, along with its main statistical parameters. This analysis allows to develop a more realistic scattering channel component and presents an enhanced UM-VLC channel model. The performance of the proposed UM-VLC system is evaluated using computational numerical simulations following the IEEE 802.1.5.7 standard in terms of Channel Impulse Response (CIR), received power, Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR), Root Mean Square (RMS) delay spread, and Bit Error Rate (BER). The results demonstrate that the hemispherical dust particle distribution model is more accurate and realistic in terms of the metrics evaluated compared to other models found in the literature. Furthermore, the performance of the UM-VLC system is negatively affected when the number of dust particles suspended in the environment increases.
地下采矿（UM）是一个恶劣的行业，通常需要无线通信系统作为其优化运行的贯穿轴线。因此，在过去五年中，已经表明，除了基于射频的通信链路之外，无线光通信，如可见光通信（VLC），也可以应用于地下采矿环境。VLC系统在地下矿井中的应用，即UM-VLC，必须考虑到地下矿井独特的物理特征。在地下矿井中发现的物理现象中，最重要的是光发射器和接收器的定位、不规则的墙壁、阴影以及在隧道中发现的一种典型现象，即由大气和灰尘颗粒引起的散射。因此，有必要使用与这些场景一致的适当灰尘颗粒分布模型，以便以连贯的方式描述散射现象，从而设计出性能更好的实际UM-VLC系统。因此，在本文中，我们对光链路与悬浮在地下采矿环境和大气中的灰尘颗粒之间的相互作用进行了深入研究。此外，我们通过分析推导了一个半球形三维灰尘颗粒分布模型及其主要统计参数。这种分析有助于开发更实际的散射信道分量，并提出一个增强的UM-VLC信道模型。根据IEEE 802.1.5.7标准，使用计算数值模拟，从信道冲激响应（CIR）、接收功率、信噪比（SNR）、均方根（RMS）延迟扩展和误码率（BER）等方面评估了所提出的UM-VLC系统的性能。结果表明，与文献中发现的其他模型相比，半球形灰尘颗粒分布模型在评估的指标方面更准确、更实际。此外，当环境中悬浮的灰尘颗粒数量增加时，UM-VLC系统的性能会受到负面影响。
