While the company declined to identify the mine, it did confirm the network spanned more than 115 square miles and plans were in place to expand that to about 150 square miles.

Rajant, which also installs its networking solutions in the oil and gas and military industries, among others, said the coal operation had the distinction of being one of the largest in North America.

Each of the 300 BreadCrumb nodes has three radios linked into the site's different frequencies, and the system will operate at all times along with 12 other applications on the network. More applications would be added in the future, it said.

“This network has been operational for more than one year – reliably running critical mining operation applications all that time without a single failure,” founder and chief executive Bob Schena said.

“This massive deployment demonstrates the reliability of our networks, their ability to scale, and how we address mobility with nearly 200 pieces of equipment in constant motion.”

Ideal mining-related applications for Rajant’s kinetic mesh networking include fleet monitoring and control, equipment health monitoring, high-precision global positioning systems, slope stability radar, fuel/tire/pump station monitoring, video monitoring, collision avoidance, miner tracking and more.