Evaluation of Wireless Short-Range Communication Performance in a Quarry Environment

The quarry industry provides sand and gravel to produce the aggregates used to construct buildings and road structures. Productivity and safety within this industry can be improved by using wireless communication technologies. EMC, dust and solid materials that present non-line-of-sight (NLOS) issues create a harsh environment that poses challenges to using wireless communication. This paper evaluates how a set of wireless standards performs in the quarry in terms of range and packet reception ratio (PRR). The assessment includes the wireless short-range technologies ZigBee, 802.11g and 802.11p using frequencies of 868 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.9 GHz. We present measurement results from a real quarry environment and identify system considerations for quarry safety and efficiency applications based on collected data.