Antenna placement on a large mining vehicle

Abstract

For collision avoidance systems in mining equipments, antennas need to be placed close to large metallic vehicles. This paper estimates the impact of a vehicle on the radiation pattern of a monopole antenna in the lower GSM band for various distances, antenna heights and frequencies around 900 MHz. The received power at a smaller truck for various positions up to a radius of 500m is estimated using computed radiation patterns coupled to the Friis transmission equation including plane earth loss. It is shown that due to shadowing on the large mining vehicle, the signal strength can be reduced by up to 20 dB, which however can be mitigated by increasing the height of the antenna on the vehicle.