US-based company Transtek are currently making adjustments to their communication products, currently being sold into stone and sand mines, before submitting them for MSHA certification to qualify them for underground coal use.

Transtek’s two-way wireless through-the-earth (TTE) communications system had been put on the company’s backburner after initial coal interest in August 2000, following demonstrations at NIOSH’s Lake Lynn Laboratory.

“The responses from visitors were positive, such as the voice communication exhibited good clarity at both underground and surface locations,” said Transtek President Steve Meiksin.

After a few years of inactivity, Transtek have returned to the product and are making modifications. The system works through an antenna buried on the surface of the mine providing two-way wireless data and real-time voice communication between transceivers on the surface and the mine interior.

Using TeleMag technology, the communications system meets the challenges imposed by properties of the mine overburden (rock, soil, sandstone, shale, slate, coal, water) that impedes the transfer of electromagnetic energy, and regulated limitations on the use of transmission energy in the mine environment.

Initial demonstrations of the TTE system were also accompanied by use of the two-way wireless mine-wide telecommunications system, which received immediate interest from mine operators.

To date Transtek have had excellent responses from current customers outside the coal industry.

“We receive orders to extend systems to cover new areas inside the mines as well as orders to add channels to installed systems so that different groups of workers can use separate channels,” said Meiksin.

“One customer who's operation is rather unique, employs several hundred workers in an underground mushroom farming operation in an excavated limestone mine, says that upon installing our system, the operation's productivity climbed 27%.”

This system, using ComCell technology, provides underground mining personnel with two-way hand-held radios (walkie-talkies), where they can communicate with the office and with other underground personnel everywhere in the mine areas covered by the system.

The system installation consists of a master control base unit that orchestrates the

operation of the entire network. Remote interface local control units together with antennas are deployed throughout the mine where wireless communications coverage is desired.

Transtek are also developing two new products for the coal mining industry which will be put forward for certification in the near future.