Rajant Corporation, the pioneer of Kinetic Mesh® wireless networks, and STRACONTech, a Kinetic Mesh Partner in Lima, Peru, say they have increased bandwidth and improved networking coverage at the Constancia mine in Peru, a project owned by Hudbay Minerals.

After reviewing options, the mine selected to invest in Rajant’s solution for mobility, which allows an almost “plug-and-play” integration with the mine’s existing LTE network, Rajant said. Eduardo Rojas, IT Manager at Hudbay, said: “Our mining operation needed a better design for its haulage and loading fleet. With the Rajant hybrid solution, we now have a significant increase in bandwidth, which will allow us to be more efficient.”

With the Rajant Peregrine LTE BreadCrumb®, the mine obtained a four times performance improvement, going from a limit of 10 Mb/s with LTE up to 40 Mb/s.

The Rajant Peregrine LTE allows connectivity on multiple frequencies simultaneously, including LTE. This improves operations so connectivity is not lost with the mining fleet even when interference exists on the 2.4 GHz, 5 Ghz, or LTE band, Rajant says.

Rajant Vice President of Sales (Americas/APAC), Sagar Chandra, added: “All mining operations want reliable and scalable connectivity. We successfully improved the performance of the installed LTE network using the Peregrine LTE, which offers the unique benefit of Kinetic Mesh and direct machine-to-machine connectivity.”

Rajant and STRACONTech teams started with a proof of concept, resulting in a larger phased installation, delivering improved performance.

STRACONTech’s team explains: “We measured 30-32 Mb/s at 1 km while the mine’s LTE had a ceiling of 10 Mb/s. We solved the challenge they had. Moreover, the investment in the Peregrine LTE was a one-time cost for the mine without recurring annual software or maintenance costs, saving them long-term.”

Hudbay’s Constancia mine produced 89,395 t of copper, 58,229 oz of gold and 2.3 Moz of silver in 2022.