Ultra-reliable 5G ushers in a new era for mining

In Yanjiahe Coal Mine, the new 5G network has replaced the optical fibre network previously used for the work and excavation. “Conventional wired networks are not that reliable for underground communications as network cabling is rather complex and the cables are vulnerable to moisture and corrosion in mines,” explains [Chen Dan – 5G Industry Director of China Unicom 5G B2B Dept.]

In addition, underground environments can be very complex. For instance, the main haulage passage may span hundreds of kilometres, so it can be difficult to monitor the operating status of equipment, such as long conveyor belts. This makes routine equipment maintenance labour-intensive and time-consuming, crippling work efficiency.

Mining enterprises have high network reliability requirements to enable continuous operations even in extreme situations. For this purpose, a conventional 5G private network is inadequate, according to Huawei. “In a conventional 5G private network, only the user plane is deployed in edge compute on-site,” explains [Hu Chunzhe, VP of Huawei Cloud Core Network Marketing Dept.]. “If the user plane is disconnected from the public control plane of the 5G core, services will be taken down.”

To address this challenge, the 5G network in the Yanjiahe Coal Mine utilises an “on-premises emergency 5GC control plane”, which is deployed on-site. If the local forwarding plane fails to communicate with Unicom’s public control plane, the emergency control plane can take over services immediately to ensure production continuity. The emergency control plane can process new service requests and allow new access from various 5G devices.

This fall-back ensures that the core production systems at the mines can keep running smoothly. Huawei and Unicom have named the resulting solution Kite-Like PNI-NPN (public network integrated non-public network).

The Yanjiahe Coal Mine 5G network is also supported by edge compute nodes on-site. That means all the data it captures can be processed locally – there is no need for data to be sent to China Unicom's public network.

The base stations, mobile phones, and other connected sensors underground are designed to be explosion-proof. That ensures the network is sufficiently reliable to monitor all the operations and devices, such as excavation and belt conveyors.

The mine, which adopted 5G in August 2020, has full underground 5G coverage, enabled by China Mobile and Huawei. It is using the connectivity to support nine core production systems, including a chairlift system, inspection robots, a wire rope flaw detector, a winch system, a trolley mining locomotive, data transmission, and remote control.

For example, five 5G inspection robots are deployed under and above ground to monitor the belt conveyors in the main inclined shafts, central substation and pump houses, winches for main and auxiliary shafts, chairlifts and other systems. The 5G connectivity also enables a central command and control centre above ground to remotely control shearers, scraper chain conveyors, and transportation belts.

Huawei says remote control of the shearer and roadheader requires connectivity with a latency of less than 50 ms. Furthermore, collecting real-time data and HD video streams from sensors and cameras at the mining face can require network capacity of up to 1 Gbps at the mining face, which is monitored by more than 70 cameras.

Similarly, the 5G connectivity is enabling remote driving of a trolley locomotive above ground and three trolley locomotives underground. It is also used to schedule and manage the mining, excavation, electro-mechanical, transportation and ventilation systems, and water, fire, gas, and roof conditions, while supporting decision-making, dispatch and command, and real-time control. As a result, the number of workers that need to be at the mining face has been halved from 130 to 65.

Huawei says 5G can also be used to enable unmanned haulage trunks to operate for up to 22-23 hours a day, increasing production efficiency by over 10%. The connectivity could even be used to enable field engineers wearing augmented reality glasses to interact with a remote knowledge base or experts to improve equipment maintenance and inspection efficiency.

At MWC22 in Barcelona in February 2022, China Unicom and Huawei officially released the Kite-Like PNI-NPN solution. China Unicom has plans to apply the solution in more than 100 mine projects, while also exploring how the solution can support the oil, gas and chemical sectors, which can also operate in hazardous environments.

Huawei and Unicom are confident the Kite-Like PNI-NPN solution will help more and more enterprises address their increasingly strict requirements on service continuity and reliability. The two companies are working with industry standards organisations to standardise the 5G industry private network solution and promote its application on a larger scale.

Huawei and Unicom also plan to keep improving the solution’s capabilities by further exploiting the synergies between connectivity and computing. They expect more and more enterprise apps to be located at the edge of the network to provide local services.

“With on-premises edge compute, the solution enables local breakout, restricting data to within enterprise campuses for low latency and high security,” says [Chen Dan – 5G Industry Director of China Unicom 5G B2B Dept.]. “In addition, the solution can also meet enterprises' requirements on network construction costs as well as custom operations and maintenance. These advantages make the solution an ideal choice for a wide range of fields, such as open pit mining, well mining, oil and gas, as well as chemical industries.”