Iron Ore Company of Canada Selects Rajant Corporation for Mine Wide Wireless Communications
Wednesday, August 6th 2008
Rajant Corporation, a leading provider of portable, reliable, and adaptable wireless networking solutions, announced today that it has been selected by the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC), to supply the primary communications platform for mining operations at the IOC mine located in Labrador City, Labrador, Canada.
The mine-wide Rajant BreadCrumb® wireless mesh network will enable IOC to run multiple mining applications such as dispatch and health monitoring of capital equipment. The wireless network will be comprised of both fixed, stationary systems and a high number of mobile wireless systems all simultaneously interconnected. Thousands of Rajant BreadCrumb® systems are deployed worldwide, including a mine-wide installation at the Rio Tinto owned Kennecott Utah Copper mine at Bingham Canyon.
“Helping IOC improve its operational efficiency and safety was the main driver in using the Rajant BreadCrumb® wireless mesh system,” said Gary Anderson, Senior Vice President of Mining for Rajant. “Because of the conditions in Labrador City, we also knew they would require a wireless mesh system that could handle the extreme temperatures, wind, vibration and dust. Already this year, they have had temperatures of -40º Celsius and it is not uncommon to have winds over 100 mph.”
IOC will deploy a large number of Rajant BreadCrumb® systems in an interconnected wireless, meshed, self-healing network that will allow loader trucks, shovels, pumps, laptops and other production equipment to communicate with each other in real-time. Many devices that require wireless communications are constantly on the move throughout the mine and the BreadCrumb® nodes will be able to rapidly adapt to any changes in the network topology, assuring that IP traffic uptime and bandwidth are maximized. A unique benefit of a Rajant network is that no ‘root node’, central access point or ‘LAN controller’ is required, thus eliminating extra network latency and single points of failure.
IOC is Canada’s largest iron ore producer and a leading global supplier of iron ore pellets and concentrates. Owned by Rio Tinto (58.7%), Mitsubishi Corporation (26.2%), and the Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Income Fund (15.1%), IOC operates within the Rio Tinto Iron Ore group and maintains its head office in Montreal, Quebec. The facility began operation in 1962 and has produced more than one billion tonnes of crude ore with an average iron content of 39 percent.
“We selected the Rajant solution because of its ability to scale to our always changing mine configuration. We also needed a network system that could handle our tough environment,” said Robert Kuhne, Mine Management and Control Coordinator for IOC. “Their support has been second to none.”
Rajant Corporation enables secure communications-on-the-move through a portable meshed wireless network that can rapidly reconfigure and adapt in real-time. Rajant’s BreadCrumb® Wireless solutions provide networks for Mining, Homeland Security, Military, First Responders and Public Safety and provide voice and data communications across a meshed, self-healing network. Rajant’s BreadCrumb network nodes communicate with IP based client devices such as laptops, PDAs, video cameras, satellite terminals, networked radios, RFID’s and sensor devices. Please visit www.rajant.com or call (484) 595-0233.
