Routing of Emergency Data in a Wireless Sensor Network for Mines

Emergency situations in mines result in loss of precious human lives. In this paper we demonstrate the viability of the architecture of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in underground mines to achieve mine safety. We propose Minimum Delay Maximum Lifetime (MDML) routing in the wireless sensor network to achieve reliable low-delay routing of emergency data traffic and increased lifetime of the network by employing energy efficient routing for periodic non-emergency regular traffic. Routing metrics proposed in MDML is specifically designed considering signal propagation characteristics in underground mines. We also suggest configuring priority queue in a sensor node giving higher priority to emergency traffic. Our simulation shows that zero loss and low delay can be achieved for emergency traffic. It also shows that MDML is effective in trading slight loss of network lifetime for achieving high reliability and low-delay.