Radar target identification of mining infrastructure for automated mine machinery navigation

A novel industrial application of radar sensing technology as an aiding source for navigation systems in autonomous mining equipment is described. This paper proposes a radar-based solution to provide a stable external reference for an existing inertial-technology mining navigation system. It documents trials of a 26 GHz radar unit in an underground coal mine, using only the existing mine infrastructure in the form of reinforcing wall and roof bolts as targets. The presented pilot trial attempts to identify the bolt plates by their RCS back-scatter. An improvement to this approach, using complex natural resonance (CNR) for target characterisation based on broad bandwidth excitation, is investigated and a theoretical simulation of the target identification process is described.