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Perimeter protection in Ghana

Protecting the perimeter of a mine is difficult, primarily because of the size of the property and subsequently the length of the perimeter. Due to these constraints and the difficulty associated in verifying alarm conditions, protecting large perimeters effectively is a difficult and expensive process.

On the other hand, it is more feasible and practical to protect strategic sites and process areas where perimeters are more manageable and security personnel can verify and respond to alarms in a reasonable time.

This concept has been implemented at a gold mine in Ghana where the client has erected a dual fence with AcoustAlert PIDS fence detection on both inner and outer fence lines. The fence has been split into eight zones of up to 300 metres each, affording detection of an intrusion into their critical processing plant area. The dual perimeter fence is approximately 2400 metres long and the AcoustAlert field processors are housed in specially manufactured steel kiosks around the perimeter, between the two fence lines in the dead-man’s zone.

One concern from the client was our initial proposal to use fibre-optic cable around the site in order to LAN link all AcoustAlert field processors. The difficulty in a place like Ghana is getting technical guys to splice and maintain the fibre LAN network infrastructure. To solve this problem, AcoustAlert used two-wire copper Ethernet extenders which can extend Ethernet over many hundreds of metres over a normal two core cable. This removed the difficulty around maintenance. Specific lightning protection was implemented for the two-wire copper connection along with lightning protection on the incoming mains.

All field processors are linked over the two-wire Ethernet infrastructure back to a central control room. All field processors are managed by the AcoustAlert site manager software, which besides handling and managing the AcoustAlert field processor can also monitor alarm input conditions and switch outputs which are mapped to inputs in the software.

The operator also has several soft outputs which can be controlled on the user interface to open or close gates, or switch lights on and off, manually or automatically. This I/O control makes linking alarm inputs (from AcoustAlert or other devices or conditions) to CCTV and other alarm/access systems to switch cameras, and so on.

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