Low cost channel sounding in the Aitik open pit mine with USRPs 

Rickard Nilsson and Jaap van de Beek

Lulea University of Technology

Abstract: We have performed low-cost channel sounding with two USRPs in the Aitik copper mine, one of the largest open pit mines in Europe situated outside Gällivare in northern Sweden.  A few seconds of the raw wideband receive signal was stored on a laptop SSD at each stationary receiver location for later post processing, which consisted of synchronization and coherent impulse response averaging. With this simple technique, high dynamic range and low noise channel impulse responses at different receiver locations in the open pit mine was found and then compared to the WiFi technology, which is the dominant wireless technology used in the northern Swedish mines.