Shendong Completes World’s Largest Mining Corporate 5G Network

As of February 20, Shenhua Shendong Coal Group Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Energy, had completed the world’s largest corporate 5G network in the mining industry. The 5G network covers all of the company’s surface mines, 11 coal dressing plants, and the Shangwan underground coal mine with an annual output of 16 million tons, as well as 10 longwall mining faces, four excavation faces, and dozens of robots in three categories in other mines.

A staffer tests network terminals in an underground mine.

Shendong is a pioneer in employing 5G technology to promote intelligent mining. Given their complex environments, underground mines have extremely high requirements for anti-explosion. The company collaborated with relevant institutions to develop reliable, explosion-proof equipment for underground mines that features 6W ultra-low power, which is the first of its kind to pass national verification and has been widely used in the company’s underground mines, setting an example for large-scale 5G deployment in underground mines. Moreover, Shendong took the lead in applying the 100G bearer network in mines. The ultra-high broadband makes remote control and unmanned operations possible. Through deploying 5G LCC antennae between the cable casing and hydraulic supporters in limited spaces of the longwall mining faces, the system can reduce disturbances and achieve switch-free coal mining machine remote control with a latency of less than 50 milliseconds in the mobile scenario. Shendong took the lead in integrating 5G and UWB technologies to provide broad networks, low-latency “expressways” and precise “underground positioning and navigation” for application scenarios such as automated driving.

In recent years, Shendong has actively advanced technological and industrial revolutions in the field of coal mining. With 5G-based intelligent coal mining as the new starting point, it continues to make contributions to the progress and development of China’s “5G+” industrial internet.