Wireless for world's largest cooper mine

Malvern, Pennsylvania - Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. (KUCC), part of Rio Tinto, is switching to a wireless mesh system as the primary communications platform for operations within the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine - the world’s largest open-pit copper mine. The installation - a BreadCrumb system from Malvern-based Rajant Corp. - is expected to deliver operational efficiencies by tracking, monitoring and managing its copper mining operations.

“Enabling Kennecott to streamline its complex mining operations was the primary goal of using the Rajant BreadCrumb wireless mesh system," said Gary Anderson, Senior Vice President of Mining for Rajant. "We knew they required a high number of moving wireless nodes for improving mine monitoring and control."

KUCC has implemented a large number of BreadCrumb systems in an interconnected network that allows equipment such as loader trucks, shovels, pumps, laptops to communicate with each other in real-time. Rajant's InstaMesh software running on the wireless BreadCrumb units connects hundreds of devices to each other while rapidly transporting critical operational data.

According to US vendor, its systems are "a mix of secure access nodes that enable data and voice communications across a meshed, self-healing network for fleet dispatch, health monitoring and other critical mining applications." Many of the devices that require wireless communications are moving at all times throughout the wireless mining infrastructure. The BreadCrumb nodes, it claims, rapidly adapt to any changes in the network topology, assuring that IP traffic uptime and bandwidth are maximised.