Versatile antennas, Effective Radio Communications

Poynting is the provider of robust Circular Polarised antennas to clients in various industries. The company is well-resourced, vastly experienced and is an excellent position to design solutions to challenges that mining companies often encounter underground with the failure of radio communications due to poor signal transmission in tunnels.

Currently, there are increased activities in the underground mining environment. In some cases, the underground tunnel infrastructure stretches over many kilometres or miles even hundreds of kilometres or miles. In this harsh and unforgiving environment, effective radio communication can enable mining companies to operate safely, environmentally friendly and productively. In order to meet these requirements of effective communication, reliable equipment is of paramount importance.

Need for effective radio communications

Radio communication is one of the most important platforms to enable the flow of critical information in underground tunnels. Given this, the team at Poynting Antennas and Inteto Connect can assist Mining Companies in the choice of equipment, particularly the antennas the Mining Company needs to deploy to maximise radio communication capabilities underground.

Significance of informed choice

The significance of an informed choice in critical components for radio communication cannot be overemphasised, especially concerning antennas. This is considered as one of the most common challenges encountered in radio communications, the failure of conventional antennas to deliver reliable data to ensure personnel safety and maximise productivity whilst protecting the underground environment.

Operational challenges

In many cases, antenna failure in radio communications can lead to the following operational challenges: costly downtime to key processes, escalation of safety risks, and, in some cases, breaches of environmental regulations.

Circular Polarised antennas

Circular Polarised antennas have proven to be much more effective than conventional, unipolarised antennas, covering greater distances underground with higher reliability as well as higher data throughput.

In a product brief to mining companies and contractors through Mining Business Africa, Poynting’s ‘Business Development Expert, Pieter Prinsloo, first highlights the shortcoming of Conventional antennas, then how the versatility of Circular Polarised antennas offers muchneeded convenience as an option.

The

shortcoming of ‘conventional’

Antennas

Prinsloo points out that the uni-polarised nature of conventional antennas is their major shortcoming. “Conventional antennas’ are Uni-Polarised, for example, either Vertical or Horizontally. Due to this ‘uni-Polarised’ nature, the Electromagnetic Wave ‘distribution’ in the tunnel is only in one or the other of either Vertical or Horizontal Polarization causing non-optimal reception- and/or transmission in the crosssectional area of the tunnel,” he points out.

Due to this shortcoming of poor coverage, conventional antennas require a lot more antennas to achieve the required ‘signal level’ or ‘coverage’ in all parts of the tunnel. Since these antennas are attached to the Radio equipment, naturally, this means that a lot more Radios need to be deployed to achieve the desired coverage. In the end, this increases the cost of underground radio communication drastically.

Advantages of using Circular Polarised antennas underground

Instead, as an alternative, Circular Polarised antennas achieve maximum coverage of the cross-section of the tunnel through Circular Polarization. With ‘Circular Polarization’ the tunnel acts as a ‘Waveguide’ for the rotating

(Circularly Polarised) Electromagnetic Wave. In the process, it creates a far better signal distribution in a far larger cross-section of the tunnel over a further distance. This results in much better reception and transmission of the data over a far greater distance creating a reliable, fast and cost-effective radio communication system.

Prinsloo expounds how the ‘Circular Polarised’ electromagnetic wave enhances signals: “Circular Polarised antennas ‘rotates’ the Electromagnetic (EM) Wave as it propagates down a tunnel. This means that the Vertical and Horizontal components of the EM Wave change ‘orientation’ constantly. This results in what can be described as ‘flooding’ the cross-section of the tunnel with EM Energy in all orientations. This allows, for example, a Receiving antenna that’s oriented horizontally to still receive a very good signal.

The ‘flooding’ of the tunnel with the rotating Electromagnetic signal also causes multiple reflections off the sides, roof and floor of the tunnel contributing to a much larger radio signal being received by the radio receiver.

“A Radio transmission that uses an antenna, that is for example, uni-polarised and in a Vertically orientation, will be very poorly received by a Radio receiver with a uni-polarised receiving antenna positioned in a Horizontal orientation. Conversely, with a Circular Polarized antenna the orientation of the receiving antenna is unimportant as it can receive the ‘rotating signal’ in any orientation within good signal parameters to function to the full capability of the Radio,” explains Prinsloo.

Huge cost savings

From the abovementioned, the cost savings from utilising Circular Polarised antennas in underground Mines is huge. Generally, depending on the tunnel environment, approximately 65% to 75% cost saving can be achieved through the enhanced coverage created by Circular Polarisation due to the subsequent lesser numbers of Radio equipment (and associated costs) required to achieve the same coverage.

Success underlines antenna’s efficiency

In general, there should be no doubt about the efficacy of Poynting’s Circular Polarised antennas.

Poynting’s Polarised antennas continues to perform superbly in underground mining environments. Essentially, this is based on these antenna’s unique improved coverage ability enabling Mines to cut costs by using less Radio/ antenna combinations without compromising underground safety, operational efficiency and/ or damage to the environment.

In one of the numerous examples underscoring successful deployment, the Team Lead relates feedback from a Radio vendor at a Coal Mine in South Africa. “Using a 100Mbps Ethernet capable Radio with 2,4GHz / 5-6GHz Wi-Fi Radio channels, the hard rock mine achieved 75Mbps at 500m (1 640ft) down the tunnel. Considering that Ethernet’s Channel Efficiency is only 80% and a maximum of 80Mbps will be received in a 100Mbps Ethernet Channel, this underlines the propagation efficiency of our Circular Polarised antennas,” he says.

Eager and well-resourced

Currently Poynting have projects scheduled on the continent with a vested interest in Public Road tunnel communication for Vehicles. The company is looking forward to suppling its Circular Polarised antenna solutions to these potential clients with very large interest being shown to improve 4G/5G communication in these tunnels carrying Public Transport.

Looking ahead, in the second half of 2023 and beyond, Prinsloo vows that Poynting Antennas and Inteto Connect are well-resourced to address the need for versatile and reliable Circular Polarised antennas for effective radio communications in tunnels, be it tunnels carrying Mining Operations or Road tunnels carrying Public Transport.