Wireless sensor network-based fire detection, alarming, monitoring and prevention system for Bord-and-Pillar coal mines
Highlights
► Coal mine fire can occur at any time and often results in partial or total evacuation of mine personnel and could result in the loss of lives. ► Having a warning system that is capable of detecting fire and generating an alarm is important. ► We present the response time of a proposed system for detecting fire hazard in a Bord-and-Pillar coal mine panel. ► Our scheme uses wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and can be used to detect the exact fire location and spreading direction. ► It can provide the fire prevention system to stop the spread of fire to save the natural resources and the mining personnel from fire. Performance evaluation results show that the average network delay varies almost linearly with the increasing the number of hops.
Introduction
Fires are still too common an occurrence in the mining industry. Workplace safety in underground coal mines against abrupt fires is a serious concern. For instance, from 1990 to 2007 alone, 1601 reportable fires (an average of 89 fires per year) occurred in the U.S. mining industry (Trevits et al., 2009) – a statistic that should suffice to motivate the need for having improved systems of mine fire detection, monitoring, and overall improved mine workplace safety.
This paper discusses the performance of a WSN-based simulation model for building a fire monitoring and alarm (FMA) system that can be applied to the Bord-and-Pillar coal mine panel, in which the mined material is extracted across a horizontal plane while leaving “pillars” of untouched material to support the overburden, leaving open areas underground (Hustrulid and Bullock, 2001). The proposed WSN-based coal mine Bord-and-Pillar system is capable of not only providing real-time monitoring and alarm in case of a fire, but also providing the exact fire location and spreading direction by continuously gathering, analyzing, and storing real time information. The proposed model was formulated to meet the requirements of early fire detection and the performance of an FMA system.
Several pioneer works have been done for monitoring of fire hazard in different environments. Song and Hong (2007) designed a reference model of fire detection and monitoring system using BACnet (building automation and control network) that can be applied to fire detection and monitoring of a building, and they developed a simulator, which can be effectively utilized to predict the delay characteristics for fire detection and monitoring (FDM) system configuration.
Dubaniewicz et al. (1993) studied the issue of address methane, carbon monoxide, and distributed temperature monitoring within a mine. They distributed the temperature sensors within the mine panel to cover a large area and the system is based on the Raman effect.
Tan et al. (2007) designed a system, named as WMSS (WSN-based Mine Safety System), for use in mine safety monitoring. The system was accomplished for real-time monitoring of the environment under the mine, and it can also provide the pre-warning for the fire.
Edwards et al. (2000) conducted research work on the Safety Research Coal Mine (SRCM) at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Pittsburgh Research Laboratory, with coal, diesel-fuel, electrical cable, conveyor-belt, and metal-cutting fire sources to determine the response of fire sensors to products of combustion (POC) and demonstrated that Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) and smoke fire sensors have an earlier fire detection capability than a CO sensor. They applied neural network program to correctly classify coal, diesel-fuel, electrical-cable, and conveyor-belt test fires. Their objectives were to evaluate the comparative time sequence of alarm values for CO, smoke, and MOS fire sensors for in-mine combustible source fires and to determine a suitable set of mine fire sensors and a neural network analysis program which can be used to classify a mine fire combustible source. Yu et al. (2005) presented a WSN-based real-time forest fire detection system. They mainly described the data collecting and processing in WSN for real-time forest fire detection and they used neural network to monitoring and detecting sensor networks. Joseph et al. (2007) discussed the implications and hazards of fire in libraries/archives and explained the necessary preventive measures to be taken. They described in detail the various components comprising fire detection and alarm system, which provided necessary guidelines to the selection and installation of an ideal fire alarm system. Fischer (2007) applied a simulation technique for the detection part of a fire detection system. His point of interest was to differentiate fire and non-fire situation to reduce the false alarm rate in the non-fire case. Giglioa et al. (2003) presented an improved replacement detection algorithm that offers increased sensitivity to smaller, cooler fires as well as a significantly lower false alarm rate. Performance of both the original and improved algorithms was established using theoretical simulation and high-resolution Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) scenes.
Chen et al. (2004) presented an early fire-alarm raising method based on video processing. The basic idea of the proposed system was to adopt aRGB (red, green, blue) model based chromatic and disorder measurement for extracting fire-pixels and smoke-pixels. The extracted fire-pixels have verified if it is a real fire by both dynamics of growth and disorder, and further smoke. Based on iterative checking on the growing ratio of flames, a fire-alarm is given when the alarm-raising condition is met. Experimental results show that the developed technique can achieve fully automatic surveillance of fire accident with a lower false alarm rate and, thus, is very attractive for the important military, social security, commercial applications, and so on, at a general cost.
Gottuk et al. (2002) developed a mechanism that can be used to assess the feasibility of reducing false alarms while increasing sensitivity through the use of combined conventional smoke detectors with carbon monoxide (CO) sensors that was accomplished through an experimental program using both real (fire) and nuisance alarm sources. A broad selection of sources was used, ranging from smoldering wood and flaming fabric, to cooking fumes. Individual sensor outputs and various signal-conditioning schemes involving multiple sensors were explored. Their results show that improved fire-detection capabilities can be achieved over standard smoke detectors by combining smoke measurements with CO measurements in specific algorithms and false alarms can be reduced while increasing sensitivity (i.e., decreasing the detection time for real fires). They established an alarm criterion using algorithms consisting of the product of smoke obscuration and the change in CO concentration. They proved that alarm algorithms utilizing ionization detector smoke measurements are more effective than measurements from photoelectric detectors.
Nebiker and Pleisch (2001) presented a detector for measuring the gas concentration of carbon dioxide based on an infrared photo-acoustic principle. Their idea is that many molecules and particles in the atmosphere cause extinction of an incident beam of infrared radiation due to absorption (that occurs at wavelengths, which are very specific for each molecule) and scattering processes.
Pfister (2004) developed a multisensory/multi-criteria detection technology, a new generation of products that derive various alarm and diagnostic criteria from a combination of input signals from sensors responding to different fire phenomena and compared to that of systems that depend on single sensor inputs only.
Pozo et al. (1997) developed a technique to detect and map fire growth by using a multitemporal, multispectral analysis of AVHRR images that provides a rapid evaluation of the area affected by the fire but suppresses the ambiguous thermal signal produced by non-vegetated terrain.
Section snippets
Motivation
Coal mines are much more prone to natural fire occurrences than other solid mineral mines. Coal being a costly mineral, the damage and destruction by fire in the coal mines is also catastrophic. The coals in underground mines are subject to fire by natural oxidation procedure, and when caught on fire, it is quite nearly impossible to reduce the spread, if the fire is not detected and prevented at the early stage. So, it is quite important to sense fire at a stage that is close to its
Description of developed Bord-and-Pillar panel of a coal mine
Bord-and-Pillar is a system for underground mining (mainly for coal, iron mining) in which a horizontal plane some “pillars” of mined materials are left to support the overburden while mined materials are extracted leaving some open areas around the pillars which are known as “rooms”. This is done in a fashion that remains a grid of pillars after extraction of the mined materials (Hustrulid and Bullock, 2001, Room and Pillar, no date).
For a successful Bord-and-Pillar mining, an optimum pillar
Occurrence of fire in underground coal mines
After extracting a few pillars, some fractures may be created in the remaining pillars, due to the stress produced by cutting other pillars. Air enters at the inlet, passes through the panel and finally leaves the panel through the outlet. Oxygen gas from air gets absorbed by the fractured pillars. As a result, oxidation occurs and causes heat buildup in the coal pillars, which increases the coal temperature. As time passes, additional absorption by the tempered pillars occurs, which further
Proposed system
In this section, we elaborate on our developed model for fire monitoring and alarm system for underground coal mines Bord-and-Pillar panel using WSNs. It is proposed to put two sensor nodes at the inlet and outlet of a working panel, and a temperature sensor node at each pillar junction, and also one controller node located outside the panel in the control room to monitor the mine from outside. The two sensor nodes located at the panel inlet and outlet will continuously detect carbon monoxide
Algorithm of fire monitoring and alarm system
The schematic structure of the algorithm is presented in Fig. 7. In the algorithm, t1 and t2 are two sensing thresholds, where t2 > t1. We consider t1 as the minimum possible hard threshold (we call it “sensing threshold”) above which the source is a potential suspect to be caught on fire. t2 is another soft threshold (we call it “proximity threshold”) which can be achieved only when a sensor node is at a certain distance (length of a pillar) away from the source of fire. This is to ensure that a
Performance evaluation of the proposed system
The algorithm runs in O(n) complexity, where n is the number of sensor nodes. Thus, the detection delay of fire is just the network delay for the traverse of data from sensing node to the controller.
TD = tn, where TD is the total delay and tn is the network delay. We calculate the maximum network delay by following the procedure outlined below.
Power efficient mode
In this section, we introduce the power-efficient mode for the total network. This mode works only in best case where all the nodes are working. Referring to Fig. 10, Fig. 11, we first identify the data path for source to destination. Along the path, only the right and left neighbor nodes (referenced with respect to their position in the figures) may remain activated and rest of all nodes may go into an inactivate state.
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Identify the fire location and set up the path to the controller node for
Simulation results
We simulated the above network using ARENA simulation software (http://www.arenasimulation.com/). We created a schematic of the sensor network and the controller. The process of data transfer from sensor node to the controller is analyzed through delay. The controller process is also simulated. The functions used in the modules are shown in Table 1.
In the simulation work, we created a matrix of nodes as the graph. There are two other sensor nodes at the entry point and exit point of the panel.
Conclusions
In this paper, the period of computation is too small for the fire to spread from one pillar to another (depending on the distance of the pillars). To increase the dynamics of the fire detection, we can use a pre-alert for the nodes which can potentially be captured by fire in the next computation stage. For that we consider a soft intermediate threshold between sensing threshold and proximity threshold. We call it the warning threshold. The sensing threshold should be made low enough to get
Sudipta Bhattacharjee currently is Senior Research Fellow at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received his MS (by research) degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in 2011. Prior to this he received his B.Tech degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology in 2006. His research interest includes Wireless Sensor Network, Programmable Embedded System, Computer Communication & Networking, Cellular Communication,
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Sudipta Bhattacharjee currently is Senior Research Fellow at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received his MS (by research) degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in 2011. Prior to this he received his B.Tech degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology in 2006. His research interest includes Wireless Sensor Network, Programmable Embedded System, Computer Communication & Networking, Cellular Communication, Global Positioning System and Remote Sensing.
Pramit Roy currently is Senior Software Engineer at Yahoo! SDC. He pursued his MS (by Research) degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2011 in the area of vehicular ad hoc networks. Prior to this he received his BE degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Jadavpur University in 2008. He worked as Research Consultant in General Motors ECS Collaborative Research Lab Projects for IIT Kharagpur. His research works included Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks and Wireless Sensor Networks.
Soumalya Ghosh is an MS student in the School of Information Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received his B. Tech degree in Information Technology from the West Bengal University of Technology in 2006. He is currently doing research in the area of human computer interaction. His research interest includes Wireless Sensor Network, Communication & Networking and Human Computer Interaction.
Dr. Sudip Misra is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Prior to this he was associated with Cornell University (USA), Yale University (USA), Nortel Networks (Canada) and the Government of Ontario (Canada). He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada, and the masters and bachelor degrees respectively from the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Dr. Misra has several years of experience working in the academia, government, and the private sectors in research, teaching, consulting, project management, architecture, software design and product engineering roles.
His current research interests include algorithm design for emerging communication networks. Dr. Misra is the author/editor of over 120 scholarly research papers. He has won six research paper awards in different conferences. He was also the recipient of several academic awards and fellowships such as the Young Scientist Award (National Academy of Sciences, India), Young Systems Scientist Award (Systems Society of India), Young Engineers Award (Institution of Engineers, India), (Canadian) Governor General's Academic Gold Medal at Carleton University, the University Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the Doctoral level at Carleton University and the National Academy of Sciences, India – Swarna Jayanti Puraskar (Golden Jubilee Award).
He was also awarded the Canadian Government's prestigious NSERC Post Doctoral Fellowship and the Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany. Dr. Misra is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems (IJCNDS) Inderscience Publishers. He has also been serving as the Associate Editor of the Telecommunication Systems Journal (Springer SBM), Security and Communication Networks Journal (Wiley), International Journal of Communication Systems (Wiley), and the EURASIP Journal of Wireless Communications and Networking. He is also an Editor/Editorial Board Member/Editorial Review Board Member of the IET Communications, IET Wireless Sensor Systems, and the Computers and Electrical Engineering Journal (Elsevier).
Dr. Misra has edited around 6 books in the areas of wireless ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, wireless mesh networks, communication networks and distributed systems, network reliability and fault tolerance, and information and coding theory, published by reputed publishers such as Springer and World Scientific.
He was invited to chair several international conference/workshop programs and sessions. He has been serving in the program committees of several international conferences. Dr. Misra was also invited to deliver keynote lectures in over 15 international conferences in USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Professor Mohammad S. Obaidat (Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of SCS) is an internationally well-known academic/researcher/ scientist. He received his Ph.D. and M. S. degrees in Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. Dr. Obaidat is currently a full Professor of Computer Science at Monmouth University, NJ, USA. Among his previous positions are Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Graduate Program at Monmouth University and a faculty member at the City University of New York. He has received extensive research funding and has published over Ten (10) books and over Four Hundred and seventy fie (475) refereed technical articles in scholarly international journals and proceedings of international conferences, and currently working on three more books. Prof. Obaidat is the author of a new upcoming book: Wireless Sensor Networks (Cambridge University Press). He is also the editor to 2 new upcoming books: Cooperative Networking (John Wiley &Sons 2010) and Pervasive Computing and Networking (John Wiley &Sons 2010). Prof. Obaidat is the author of the book entitled: “Fundamentals of Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunications Systems,” by John Wiley & Sons in 2010. Dr. Obaidat is the Editor of the Book entitled, “E-business and Telecommunication Networks”, published by Springer in 2008. He is the co-author of the book entitled, “Security of e-Systems and Computer Networks” published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. He is the co-author of the Best Selling Book, “Wireless Networks” and “Multiwavelength Optical LANs” published by John Wily & Sons (2003). Obaidat is the editor of the book, APPLIED SYSTEM SIMULATION: Methodologies and Applications, published by Kluwer (now Springer) in 2003. Professor Obaidat has served as a consultant for several corporations and organizations worldwide. Mohammad is the Editor-in-Chief of the Wiley International Journal of Communication Systems, the FTRA Journal of Convergence and the KSIP Journal of Information Processing. He served as an Editor of IEEE Wireless Communications from 2007–2010. Between 1991–2006, he served as a Technical Editor and an Area Editor of Simulation: Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulations (SCS) International, TSCS. He also served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Simulation. He is now an editor of the Wiley Security and Communication Networks Journal, Journal of Networks, International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence, IJITCC, Inderscience. He served on the International Advisory Board of the International Journal of Wireless Networks and Broadband Technologies, IGI-global. Prod. Obaidat is an associate editor/ editorial board member of seven other refereed scholarly journals including two IEEE Transactions, Elsevier Computer Communications Journal, Kluwer Journal of Supercomputing, SCS Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, Elsevier Journal of Computers and EE, International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, The Academy Journal of Communications, International Journal of BioSciences and Technology and International Journal of Information Technology. He has guest edited numerous special issues of scholarly journals such as IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC, IEEE Wireless Communications, IEEE Systems Journal, SIMULATION: Transactions of SCS, Elsevier Computer Communications Journal, Journal of C & EE, Wiley Security and Communication Networks, Journal of Networks, and International Journal of Communication Systems, among others. Obaidat has served as the steering committee chair, advisory Committee Chair and program chair of numerous international conferences including the IEEE Int’l Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, IEEE International Phoenix Conference on Computers and Communications, IEEE Int’l Performance, Computing and Communications Conference, IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, SCS Summer Computer Simulation Conference, SCSC’97, SCSC98-SCSC2005, SCSC2006, the International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems since its inception in 1998, International Conference on Parallel Processing, Honorary General Chair of the 2006 IEEE Intl. Joint Conference on E-Business and Telecommunications, ICETE2006. He served as General Co-Chair of ICETE 2007-ICETE 2010. He has served as the Program Chair of the International Conference on Wireless Information Networks and Systems from 2008-Presnet. He is the co-founder and Program Co-Chair of the International Conference on Data Communication Networking, DCNET since its inception in 2009. Obaidat has served as the General Chair of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications, AICCSA2007, the IEEE AICCSA 2009 Conference. and the 2006 International Symposium on Ad hoc and Ubiquitous Computing (ISAHUC’06). He is the founder of the International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, SPECTS and has served as the General Chair of SPECTS since its inception. Obaidat has received a recognition certificate from IEEE. Between 1994–1997, Obaidat has served as distinguished speaker/visitor of IEEE Computer Society. Since 1995 he has been serving as an ACM distinguished Lecturer. He is also an SCS distinguished Lecturer. Between 1996–1999, Dr. Obaidat served as an IEEE/ACM program evaluator of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board/Commission, CSAB/CSAC. Obaidat is the founder and first Chairman of SCS Technical Chapter (Committee) on PECTS (Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems). He has served as the Scientific Advisor for the World Bank/UN Digital Inclusion Workshop- The Role of Information and Communication Technology in Development. Between 1995–2002, he has served as a member of the board of directors of the Society for Computer Simulation International. Between 2002–2004, he has served as Vice President of Conferences of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International SCS. Between 2004–2006, Prof. Obaidat has served as Vice President of Membership of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International SCS. Between 2006–2009, he has served as the Senior Vice President of SCS. Currently, he is the President of SCS. One of his recent co-authored papers has received the best paper award in the IEEE AICCSA 2009 international conference. He also received the best paper award for one of his papers accepted in IEEE GLOBCOM 2009 conference. Dr. Obaidat received very recently the Society for Modeling and Simulation Intentional (SCS) prestigious McLeod Founder's Award in recognition of his outstanding technical and professional contributions to modeling and simulation. He received in Dec 2010, the IEEE ComSoc- GLOBECOM 2010 Outstanding Leadership Award for his outstanding leadership of Communication Software Services and Multimedia Applications Symposium, CSSMA 2010.
He has been invited to lecture and give keynote speeches worldwide. His research interests are: wireless communications and networks, telecommunications and Networking systems, security of network, information and computer systems, security of e-based systems, performance evaluation of computer systems, algorithms and networks, high performance and parallel computing/computers, applied neural networks and pattern recognition, adaptive learning and speech processing. Recently, Prof. Obaidat has been awarded a Nokia Research Fellowship and the distinguished Fulbright Scholar Award. During the 2004/2005, he was on sabbatical leave as Fulbright Distinguished Professor and Advisor to the President of Philadelphia University in Jordan, Dr. Adnan Badran. The latter became the Prime Minister of Jordan in April 2005 and served earlier as Vice President of UNESCO. Prof. Obaidat is a Fellow of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International SCS, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). For more info; see: http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/mobaidat/.
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Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of SCS.