How Plixer Replicator Strengthens GPS Correction Delivery in Autonomous Mining

Most mining sites leveraging autonomous vehicles rely heavily on GNSS feeds for precise positioning, navigation, and operational efficiency. These feeds provide the centimeter-level accuracy required for autonomous trucks, drills, and other heavy machinery to function safely and effectively.

When GNSS feeds drop, vehicles must stop; even minutes-long interruptions quickly become costly.

At modern output rates, the cost of interruptions can exceed thousands of dollars per fleet per minute, plus the risk of vehicle overlap or stranded equipment.

Yet for many sites, the weak point isn’t hardware failure or base-station error. It’s the way GPS correction data moves across the network.

Why GPS correction delivery is sometimes unreliable in mines

Most mining networks weren’t designed for constant, low-jitter broadcast traffic. Correction feeds often start as multicast or broadcast streams from a base station, but mines rely on radio and segmented IP networks to reach vehicles scattered across kilometers of rugged terrain.

In these environments:

• Multicast routes often break at segment boundaries. Radio mesh and VLAN isolation can block or duplicate streams.
• Bandwidth variation adds instability. When link quality changes, GNSS data packets drop or arrive out of sequence.
• Manual reconfiguration slows recovery. Each receiver must be re-registered or restarted to reconnect to the correction source.

The result is predictable but costly downtime.

Given that GPS correction feeds are mission-critical, they should be treated like any core application: with redundancy, telemetry, and high availability.

How Plixer Replicator changes the delivery model

Plixer Replicator takes a different approach. Instead of broadcasting correction data into an unreliable network, it replicates unicast streams directly and continuously to each receiver that needs them.

This means a single GPS correction source, or multiple redundant ones, can feed dozens of endpoints in real time, even across segmented or wireless mesh networks. Replicator ensures the stream remains synchronized without adding measurable latency.

This enables:

• Format flexibility: Supports CMR+, RTCM, or NMEA streams, translating seamlessly across receivers.
• Any-to-any routing: One input can be distributed to many outputs on different ports or subnets.
• High availability: Dual appliances share a Virtual IP (VIP). If one fails, the standby instance takes over instantly.
• Operational visibility: Real-time dashboards show packet flow, status, and stream health, giving engineers a clear view of feed continuity.

Because Replicator uses unicast replication instead of multicast, it sidesteps the routing constraints that traditionally limit GNSS correction coverage in remote sites.

Inside the architecture (for network teams)

Plixer Replicator operates as a UDP stream replication engine and is ideal for time-sensitive telemetry like GNSS corrections.

Each appliance can:

1. Ingest GPS correction data from a base station or timing source
2. Replicate and forward packets to defined endpoints in a user-configured profile
3. Maintain session persistence so receivers continue to receive data even during failover

Replicator appliances can be deployed as hardware units or virtual machines, depending on scale. In High Availability mode, both appliances run in parallel; one is active, one is on standby. They synchronize state through a shared virtual IP address, ensuring uninterrupted delivery if the active node fails or a network segment becomes unavailable.

The system’s interactive web interface and CLI allow administrators to configure stream mappings, set up alarms for packet loss, and verify inbound/outbound health in real time. For large mines that use multiple correction towers or base stations, Replicator profiles can also be grouped, simplifying how streams are added or rerouted during expansion.

Because the appliance communicates via standard UDP and TCP ports, it can fit into existing mine network architectures with minimal firewall changes. Plixer Replicator has also been verified to operate seamlessly alongside Caterpillar MineStar systems.

A mining operation’s experience

One major mining company faced slow and expensive downtime whenever there was an interruption in their GNSS feeds. Their control center could see that feeds were dropping, but it was difficult to pinpoint whether the fault originated from the base station, tower radios, or the machine network. Each incident triggered a stop in autonomous operations and a manual diagnostic process that averaged over an hour.

After deploying Plixer Replicator in a High Availability configuration, the team saw a substantial improvement:

• Stream visibility: Engineers could instantly confirm whether the correction stream was active or failing on the network layer.
• Automatic failover: If one tower’s Replicator node went offline, the paired node maintained the feed using the shared VIP.
• Faster validation: Operations staff could verify GNSS integrity within minutes using the Replicator dashboard.

The impact was tangible. The site reduced the time needed to isolate and recover from feed interruptions by 80–90%. While short interruptions still occurred during upstream network faults, full fleet halts became rare—and when they did occur, recovery was fast and predictable.

A detailed overview of this deployment and its results is available in our autonomous mining case study.

Why redundancy matters beyond uptime

At first glance, redundancy looks like a cost-control measure. But in mining, it’s also a safety function.

When an autonomous truck loses positional accuracy, it must stop. When multiple machines lose sync at once, coordination among control systems becomes more complex.

High Availability replication ensures that positional data keeps flowing, reducing the number of forced stops and manual restarts during network maintenance or outages. The result is smoother fleet behavior and fewer unsafe restarts after communication loss.

Even for mines not yet running fully autonomous fleets, the same principle applies to semi-autonomous drilling, dozing, or blasting systems that rely on continuous GNSS correction. Replicator stabilizes the signal layer so automation engineers can focus on operations, not connectivity.

Simplicity in installation and operation

Competing solutions often rely on specialized GPS servers, network-specific protocols, or multicast gateways that require deep reconfiguration of mine networks. Replicator’s appeal is that it replaces all of that complexity with a single, intuitive replication layer. Configuration typically takes less than an hour, and once running, it operates continuously without manual tuning.

Operations engineers describe it as “set once, monitor occasionally.” For sites managing hundreds of vehicles and multiple correction towers, that simplicity is key: fewer variables, fewer recovery steps, and less dependency on on-site networking specialists.

Next steps

Autonomous and semi-autonomous fleets are only as reliable as the data that guides them. GPS correction feeds represent a single point of failure that few operations teams can afford to overlook.

Plixer Replicator adds fault tolerance and observability to that signal path by:

• Keeping correction feeds synchronized and redundant, even across segmented or radio-mesh networks
• Providing a clear, real-time view of stream health
• Reducing investigation time during outages from hours to minutes
• Integrating with existing autonomy ecosystems without specialized hardware

Replicator significantly reduces both the  frequency and duration of downtime, turning what used to be a major operational risk into a manageable event. Plixer Replicator is already deployed in large mining environments where autonomous systems depend on continuous GNSS correction data. To see how it can help improve reliability and safety in your operation, schedule a personalized demo with one of our engineers.