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Positioning Performance in Deep Pit Mines using GNSS Augmented with Locata

Remote mining operations, such as the De Beers’ Venetia mine in the northeast corner of South Africa, require a reliable high level of positioning precision ( 10 cm which make areas of the mine incompatible with continuous autonomous mining operations. Additionally, scintillation clouds further exacerbating line-of-sight issues with GNSS by interfering with signals in certain regions of the sky. These scintillation clouds obscure significant portions of the sky impacting the high precision carrier phase measurements required for precise positioning.

This research effort shows that adding a network of eight ground-based positioning beacons, such as those made by Locata, positioned at equidistant points around the upper mine rim significantly reduces the average and median positioning precision (both severity and duration) for all points within the mine. The average and median error can be further reduced with the addition of a ninth LocataLite beacon halfway up the haul road on the eastern side of the mine. The addition of the LocataNet system of beacons allows for precise and continuous mining operations at depths previously unavailable using solely GNSS.