Optimization of the Methane Gas Sensor Immunity Based on

Electromagnetic Measurement
ZHANG Yingchun, MA Fengying
College of Electronic Information and Control Engineering, Shandong Polytechnic University, Jinan 250100, Shandong, P.R. China
zyc_10@126.com

Abstract: In order to clear up false alarms caused by electromagnetic interference, a novel field way was put forward in which
the radiated emission measurement in the coal mining roadway was finished. The data was obtained through the spectrum
analyzer. Firstly, the optimization of explosion-proof enclosure was completed according to the distribution of radiated
interference characteristics. As a result, with the optimization of explosion-proof enclosure, the false alarms of methane gas
sensor significantly reduced; however, there were still occasionally false alarms when nearby electrical equipments were
switched on and off. The false alarms were caused by conducted interference mostly from lines. Secondly, the complex EMI
filter was put forward at power ports and the EMI was controlled within the allowable range. In the end, the running results
demonstrated that the problem of false alarms had been resolved successfully. It is concluded that the improved measures are
highly remarkable in enhancing the immunity of the methane gas sensor.
Key Words: Methane Gas Sensor, False Alarm, Electromagnetic Interference, Shielding Properties, Immunity



1 Introduction
With the improvement of coal mining automation,
underground EMI has become particularly severe because
the underground space is relatively narrow and the number
of high power electrical instruments has increased. At times
EMI resulted in errors of the monitoring and wireless
communication systems. The wiring-motor vehicle was one
of the strong EMI sources during the transient process of
start-stop and switching of supply districts, with the
consequence that false alarms in the underground
monitoring system led to much hidden trouble of coal
mining safety during production. It is a challenge to analyze
underground EMI distribution characteristics and improve
the EMC of a methane gas monitoring system.
Currently, there are many studies on common system
EMC, but hardly any research has been carried out in the
field of EMC in coal mining. Delogne generated a
regulation of electromagnetic wave transmissions and
indicated the difficulty of studying practical transmissions
in tunnels
[1]
. Hill studied the traveling wave in tunnels and
radiation impedance of dipoles
[2]
. Rappaport conducted an
investigation into wireless communication and channel
prediction using a ray tracing method
[3]
. These studies
largely focused on wireless communication, which did not
involve EMC studies in coal mining. Sun carried out a study
of harsh classification on electromagnetic compatible
measures of mining monitoring and communication
equipment
[4]
, as well as an investigation in coalmining
EMC
[5-6]
. However, there has been no report about the
underground electromagnetic environment measurement
and analysis of coal mining so far. We carried out
electromagnetic environment measurement.

*
Project J10LG13 supported by the Scientific and Technological Institutions
Plan of Shandong Province
2 Electromagnetic Interference Measurement
2.1 Measurement Introduce
Electromagnetic radiation intensity was measured in the
main roadway of the thirteenth mining and the fourth
mining of the Pingdingshan Coal Co.Ltd on the April
22th~27th, 2009. The product capability of the thirteenth
mining is 1,800,000 tons a year. The cross-section of
roadway is an arch with the width of about 3.5m. There are
power cables, electric vehicles, communication systems, as
well as leakage PHS communication system in the roadway.
The annual output of the fourth mining of the Pingdingshan
Coal Co.Ltd is 3,000,000 tons. The coal mine sketch maps
of the cross section of tunnels are shown in Fig.1 (a) and (b).
The on-site measuring environment of the coal mining was
shown in Fig.2.
2.2 Measurement Equipment and Methods
The data was acquired through R&S spectrum analyzer
FSP7, with antenna frequencies range from 20MHz to
7GHz. The measure frequency bandwidth and resolution
were as follows: 20MHz~200MHz, BWF: 10KHz;
200MHz~500MHz, BWF: 10KHz; 0.5GHz~3GHz, BWF:
30KHz; 3GHz~7GHz, BWF: 30KHz.
The measurement points, deployed every 200-300 meters
in roadway, were near the electrical and mechanical services
chamber door, or at the branch entrance of the roadway, and
at the place where the cross-section of roadway changes.
Besides, a couple of additional measuring points were added.
So the effect of the electrical and mechanical dong rooms, as
well as the branch of the tunnel turn could be acquired and
studied.
Proceedings of the 30th Chinese Control Conference
July 22-24, 2011, Yantai, China
5058


Lighting
cables

Power
cable

Tracks
Machine
frame line
Water
main

(b)
Fig.1 Cross section of tunnels


Fig.2 The on-site measuring environment of the coal mining
2.3 Measurement Results
In Figure 3 a frequency spectrum of electromagnetic
radiation measured in a section of the abandoned mining
tunnel was shown, where the roadway without any cables
and electrical equipments was far away from the electrical
and mechanical dong rooms and fully mechanized coal
mining face. So Figure 3 could be used to stand for the
background noise of underground tunnel.
In Fig.4 the radiation intensity was shown when the
wiring-motor vehicle was passing in the tunnel. The
wiring-motor vehicle led to a strong electromagnetic
radiation. According to the Fig.4 the peak value reached
93dBuV/m in the range from 20MHz to 200MHz. While the
peak value reached 71dBuV/m in the range from 200MHz to
500MHz.
The PHS mobile communication system in the
underground coal mining could lead to a strong
electromagnetic radiation only at PHS corresponding band,
that is to say, 1.92GHz, with 40dBV/m above the
background noise in intensity.
The leakage communication system in the underground
mining could bring about strong electromagnetic
interference only in its corresponding working band, in other
words, 48.8MHz, with 25dBV/m or so above the
background noise in intensity.
The electrical cave room and power cables have little
effect on electromagnetic radiation in the tunnel
environment.
The band of strong electromagnetic radiation
interference from the PHS mobile communication and the
leakage communication systems was very narrow, while the
band of strong electromagnetic radiation interference from
wiring-motor vehicles was up to 1GHz or so. Therefore, the
wiring-motor vehicles were the most serious radiated
interference sources. In addition, we would study in detail
how to enhance the EMC of nearby methane gas sensors.
20 100 1000
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
l
'

'
d

`
u
t

u
:
`
t
)

d
b

m
luu)M|z
Fig.3 the background noise without cables and electrical equipment in the
coal mining


(a) 20MHz-200MHz

(b) 200MHz-500MHz
Fig.4 The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation when the motor vehicle
wiring passing
5059


20 100 1000
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
l
'

'
d

`
u
t

u
:
`
t
)

d
b

m
luu)M|z

Fig.5 The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation with PHS
communications
20 100 1000
30
40
50
60
70
80
l
'

'
d

`
u
t

u
:
`
t
)

d
b

m
luu)M|z

Fig.6 The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation with leakage
communication system signals

3 Optimization of Enclosure
The monitoring devices near the wiring-motor vehicle
were fixed with explosion resistant enclosures, which
included plastic and metal enclosures. In order to enhance
shielding effectiveness we took the metal enclosure as an
example to analyze the immunity of the monitoring devices,
where we used shield effectiveness (SE), i.e., the ratio of
field intensity with shielding to that of no shielding. In
practice, shielding effectiveness of an electric field is
sometimes used to represent SE
[7-9]
. The expression is as
follows:
) / lg( 20
1 2
E E SE = 1
Where
1
E is the electric field intensity of an
observation point with shielding and
2
E refers to the
electric field intensity of an observation point without
shielding.
There were apertures on the shielding to allow heat
emission, aeration, cable I/O and other uses so the EMI
outside the shielding could enter the sensor system through
the apertures. As a result, the shielding effectiveness was
somewhat diminished with the apertures.
3.1 Analysis of Enclosure Shielding Effectiveness with
Apertures
The distance from the aperture center to the measurement
point was r . Provided that r is well above the linear
dimension of the aperture and t 2 / << r , the
electromagnetism vectors can be obtained from the
following expressions:

u
c
cos
2
3
r
P
E
r
= (2)
u
c
u
sin
3
r
P
E = (3)
u
e

sin
2
r
P
H = (4)
where P represented the equivalence dipole moment,
which depended on field intensity E aperture size and
aperture shape. c was the dielectric constant of the
dielectric and u was the inclination between the vertical
scale and connecting line from the aperture center to
measurement point.
When
t

2
>> r , the following expressions could be
obtained.
0 =
r
E (5)
u

t
c
u
sin )
2
(
2
r
P
E = (6)
u

tc

sin
2
r
P
H = (7)
Given the rectangular aperture with side length a andb
b a < , square aperture with side length a and circular
aperture with radius R , the value of P could be generated
from the following expressions:
a
b
b
a
Es
a
b
Eab
P
+
=
+
=
64 ) ( 1 64
2
3
2
2
c c
(8)

2 64 2 64
2
3
3
c c Es Ea
P = = (9)

105 6
2
3
3
c
t
c Es ER
P = = (10)
Where s was the area of the aperture. From the above
expressions it could be concluded that the circular and
square apertures with the same area had the same electric
field vector.
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3.2 Effect of Perforated Lead to Coupling Interference
When there was no perforated lead through the aperture
of the metal enclosure, the intensity of the magnetic field
inside the metal enclosure was very small.
When there was a perforated lead through the aperture of
the metal enclosure, the distribution of the magnetic field
inside the enclosure evidently changed. The electromagnetic
energy could enter into the metal enclosure by coupling onto
the I/O lines. Therefore, the interference increased markedly
after the perforated lead was joined up with the inner circuit
of the sensor.
3.3 Anti-interference Measures to Radiated
Interference
We took as example the rounded aperture to analyze the
shield effectiveness. If some eyelets were substituted for the
aperture with the same area, expression (11) could be
obtained.
2
3
2
3
) ( cos
1
cos sN st
N
s st N P
S
= = (11)
Where
S
P was the entire area of all eyelets. If
N eyelets were to replace the aperture, the field intensity
would decrease to N / 1 times and the shielding
effectiveness would be enhanced markedly.
Therefore, the eyelet arrays were introduced for the
methane gas sensor alarm and ventilation apertures to reduce
the electromagnetic leakage. In the analysis above, the
electric field and the magnetic field distributions were in
substantial agreement with the electric field.
The horn structure was adopted for methane gas sensor
aperture of leads. Beads had strong anti-interference
characteristics, so EMI was restrained at cables and
shielding conductor with beads. The impedance of bead was
small at a low frequency range and large at a high frequency
range. In practice, the power and signal lines with high
frequency EMI went through the magnetic core and then the
signal passed but the high frequency EMI remained
controlled. Considering the frequency range of the EMI and
its inhibition, we used nickel zinc ferrite beads. The
conductive sealing structure was used at seam. With the
enclosure optimization of horn structure, conductive sealing
structure and beads, the interference was remarkably
decreased.
4 Conducted Interference Analysis and
Anti-interference Measurement
4.1 Composition Analysis of Conducted Interference
With the optimization of explosion-proof enclosure, the
false alarms of methane gas sensor significantly reduced;
however, there were still occasionally false alarms when
nearby electrical equipments were switched on and off or
went through a transition process. The conducted EMI was
caused by switch operations of nearby electrical equipment,
even though anti-interference measures to radiated
interference were introduced. The Electrical Fast Transient
/Burst and surge were the largest parts of EMI.
The EFT/B single pulse had very low energy, so it had
not an impact on the equipment. The junction capacitance of
semiconductor device was charged by the unipolar pulse
trains and the trains could continue for some time. As a
result, a cumulative charge could cause dislocation, reset
and memory errors of digital systems as well as the crash
occurred when it
met and exceeded chip power immunity limit finally.
The integral circuit was installed in most input circuit and
single pulse except pulse trains was restrained evidently.
The surge interference had the characteristic of high
amplitude, energy and duration of the characteristics, so it
was easy for surge to damage the methane gas sensor.
4.2 Immunity Enhancement of Sensor to Conducted
Interference
Beads can restrain high frequency range EMI. Because
in our investigation the frequency of the surge was relatively
low and the energy of the surge relatively strong, the beads
could not control the surge effectively. Therefore, a complex
EMI filter was used to deal with the surge. The relief channel
to surge was supplied by the surge protector device which
was made up of ZnO varistors and transient voltage
suppressors(VST). The surge was clearly restrained by the
surge protector device, which would turn on when the
voltage increased over the limit. The improved complex
filter is shown in Fig.7.

In Fig.7 the blue resistor stood for the bead. The V
represented varistor and VTS was the transient voltage
suppressor. The EFT/B was transient pulse interference and
its character was high amplitude of pulse group and rapid
peak rise time. It was a better way to divert instantaneous
interference from the sensor by the silicon TVS. While the
transient voltage exceeded the normal operating voltage,
TVS avalanche immediately occurred and provided a low
impedance channel for high-frequency parts of EFT/B. The
circuit to be protected kept cut-off state until the circuit
voltage went back to normal. When the instantaneous pulse
disappeared, TVS automatically turned into high impedance
state.The equivalent circuit of TVS was the series of the
dynamic impedance and the voltage source after TVS turned
on. The value for
z
Z was as follows:

z
z
z
I
V
Z
A
A
= (12)
Where
z
V A represented the change of zener voltage
and
z
I A stood for changes of zener current. In transient
circuit analysis,
z
Z would be defined as the dynamic
impedance when the current was zener test current. In most
cases it could be assumed that in the whole range of reverse
current
z
Z was nearly a fixed value so it showed pure
resistive.
z
Z had a slight difference corresponding to
different models of the TVS. Generally, the value of
z
Z was
less than 20 ohms, and then it was the corresponding low
impedance channel.

5061


Fig.7 Improved input EMI power filter

During the switch operations of large electrical
equipment, the excess voltage entered the power port of the
sensors from the power network. Once the voltage exceeded
the clamp voltage of the varistor, the resistance of the
varistor increased rapidly and the excess voltage was limited
within a prescribed voltage range. The high frequency EMI
was filtered through the filter circuit. Usually after the first
one buck, the over-voltage amplitude had been greatly
reduced, but the follow-up the circuit in terms of weak
residual voltage varistor remained high. At this point VST1,
VST2, VST3 alternately began its work in slightly higher
than the follow-up the voltage clamp circuit operating
voltage to protect the sensor normal operation. The
improved EMI filter effectively restrained the surge and
EFT/B interference at power port.
5 Overall Analysis of Anti-interference Measures
As an integrated system, the interaction of all the
anti-jamming measures needs an analysis. The shielding
measures against the radiation interference could promote
suppressing the surge and EFT/B interfere. The surge
protector device which was made up of ZnO varistors and
TVS could restrain the EFT/B. Because the varistor
responsed slowly, the TVS could supply the route for EFT/B
interference to enter ground. After the surge protector
device, the low-pass filter adopted ferrite beads to absorb
the high-frequency interference. Since the interference was
changed into heat energy by beads, the problem of limiting
inductance and capacitance in filter circuit was resolved
availably with the beads. The improved EMI control circuit
can effectively restrain the surge and EFT/B interference at
power port. The conformity of all the anti-jamming methods
has produced the resultful measures at signal ports. It is
concluded that the immunity of the methane gas sensor has
been significantly enhanced with the aggregate of all the
anti-jamming measures.
6 Conclusion
In order to clear up false alarms of methane gas sensors
in coal mining, a novel field way is put forward in which the
radiated emission measurement in the coal mining roadway
is accomplished. The optimization of explosion-proof
enclosure was finished according to the distribution of
radiated interference characteristics. As a result, the false
alarms of the methane gas sensors reduced. When
large-scale electric equipments switched, the sensors
occasionally gave false alarms caused by conducted
interference from lines. Therefore the complex EMI filter
was put forward and the EMI was controlled. The results
indicated that false alarms had been eliminated. It is
concluded that these measures are very important in
enhancing the immunity of methane gas sensors.
Acknowledgment
The present research work was supported by the
Scientific and Technological Institutions Plan of Shandong
Province. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support
of the institution.
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