IBIS-M

 

An Innovative Radar System for monitoring slopes in open-pit mines

Slope monitoring in the Surface Mining Industry has become routine practice, supporting mining staff in the management of Geotechnical risks. Interferometric radar technology has emerged as a leading edge tool for this purpose.
The success of interferometric technology is attributed to its ability to rapidly measure slope movements with sub-millimeter accuracy over large areas, obviating the need to install artificial reflectors. As a result, slope monitoring radar is effectively used for the provision of real time alers in the event of progressive movements that can potentially lead to mine slope failure.

Differentiation

Historically, radar systems have been designed with parabolic dish antennas that are mechanically moved to achieve a full scan on the observed area. These designs presented the following challenges:

 

• Limited working distance from the target resulting in the need to move the radar frequently to cover the entire active wall
• Consequent difficulties in historic data retention on the mine's slope behaviour
• Large spatial resolution owing to dish footprint size
• Stability problems induced by strong wind
• Potential reliability problems caused by numerous moving parts
• Risky atmospheric correction resulting from manual selection of a few assumed stable points

IDS has overcome the above mentioned limitations with the introduction of an innovatice radar system known as IBIS-M. This system was originally developed for landslide monitoring and recently adapted to cater for the requirements of the mining industry. Owing to the unique radar technologies used in it's design, IBIS M is able to drastically improve the performance of slope monitoring radar by:

• Significantly increasing operating distance (up to 4000m)
• Providing higher spatial resolution
• Reducing acquisition time
• Accurately providing atmospheric correction by the automatic selection of tens of thousands of stable points
• Automatically disposing of atmospheric artifacts

In addition to IBIS-M's alarm generation capability for rapid slope movement, long-term monitoring is facilitated by the erection of permanent installations remote from blasing zones. This is achieved by precise re-positioning of the system after re-deployment and data stitching of different surveys.

The low power consumption of IBIS-M is advantageous in that the system is able to be powered by solar panels with the generator used only as a back up. IBIS-M radar is commonly used by prominent mining groups internationally.

  IBIS M Brochure  1786Kb