The Hollinger Project was a huge undertaking as the historic mine site would have to be converted to an open pit mine. Some of the initial challenges would have to be overcoming the leftover structures of the mine, but the biggest challenge would be creating a wireless network that would be suitable for the site. While a public Wi-Fi network could suffice, there were security risks that ultimately made a private network for communications to be selected. With the security concerns noted, the next considerations would be the need for a system that would handle on-the-fly network changes as equipment and personnel would be moving on and off site. Finally, there were tight deadlines to meet to get the network built up as work began on converting the mine site. Other considerations would be that the system would have to be able to handle a rugged, mobile environment plagued with interference issues.
While a September deadline was unable to be met, when the equipment arrived at the start of October, the nodes and mesh network were able to be implemented by October 17th. With this rapid deployment, 30 nodes were installed on mobile equipment, and 7 fixed nodes were installed at important communication points throughout the site, including the drills, haul road and main office building. With the mesh in place, data communication can operate over a common wireless infrastructure with no single point of failure. This means that voice, data and video communications can “hop” from node to node with very little administrative overhead burdening the network. This mesh is also self healing and upgradable as it can adapt based on which nodes are removed or added to the system.
