Application of fibre optics in the mining industry

CIM Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 869, 1984

H. IKEMAN Manager, Design & Development, Canstar Communications, Division of Canada Wire and Cable Limited, Scarborough, Ontario

The highly specialized communication systems used in the mining industry place exacting demands on equipment and transmission media. Safety and reliability of services are perhaps the two most important factors. Fibre optics is ideally suited to meet these stringent requirements. Aside from being an intrinsically safe, non-sparking and EMI/RFI immune medium, fibre optics offers greater reliability, higher quality of services and superior flexibility over conventional copper or radio-based communication systems. This paper will show how fibre optics can be applied in mining industry applications. Emerging trends and concepts will be presented to show how fibre-optic-based integrated service communication networks and local distribution systems can be implemented.

Keywords: Fibre optic, Mining industry, Communication systems, Cable systems, Splicing