2017 UKSim-AMSS 19th International Conference on Modelling & Simulation
A Low-complexity, Power-efficient, Scalable System for Linear Wireless Sensor
Networks Used in Water Pipeline Monitoring Applicaitons
Muteb Alsaqhan, Mohammed Alsuliman, Omar Alharthi, Yasser Seddiq and Mohanna Al Enazi
The National Center of Electronics and Photonics Technologies
King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST)
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
{malsaqhan, oalharthi, malsuliman, yseddiq, malonezi}@kacst.edu.sa
an algorithm that involves collaboration between several
nodes to detect and localize leakage in a pipeline. The
system is implemented and tested in the lab on a water
circulation system driven by pump. Experimental tests show
positive results of detecting and localizing water leakage
events.
The rest of paper is organized as follows: in Section II, a
literature review on the related work is summarized. Section
III presents the proposed node design along with the
detection mechanism. System test scenario and results are
reported in Section IV. Finally, conclusions and future work
are presented in Section V.
Abstract—This paper presents the work of developing a lowcomplexity, power-efficient, scalable node for linear wireless
sensor networks. The developed system is intended primarily
water pipeline leakage detection applications. This work
mainly tackles the communication part of the system. A
sensing node that is equipped with a sensor, a microprocessor,
and an XBee Radio is integrated. Moreover, an algorithm is
devised to detect the occurrence of a leakage event, localize it,
and communicate it to the data center. Nodes communicate
between each other in a daisy-chain manner, which implies a
simple and low-power communication scheme. The system is
implemented and tested showing positive results about
detecting and localizing water leakage events.
II.
Keywords-WSN; pipeline monitoring; low-energy systems;
water leakage detection; sensors
I.
There are many efficient studies related to the scope of
the current work are reported in the literature. Some of them
are reviewed here. The work published in [9] reports
developing PipeNet, which is a system that detects, localizes
and quantifies leakage and burst incidents in water pipelines
[1]. It utilizes accelerometers to detect vibration associated
with in the pipeline wall cracks. Another system is NAWMS
[2] that also relies on vibration measurement. Besides
detecting leakage, this system can also measure water
consumption in households. The work in [3] proposes
TriopusNet, which is a node that is released inside a pipeline
to monitor leakage events while travelling with the water
current. The node is also equipped with three arms that,
when expands, latches the node at certain position in the
pipeline. The system proposed in [4] provides a fault-tolerant
wired/wireless sensor network. In [5], a robot agent is
deployed inside the pipe to detect and repair leakage. The
work published in [6] proposes a framework for linear
networks that are used to monitor leakage in pipelines.
INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) introduce great value
in monitoring and saving pipelines that transports precious
resources such as water and oil. The role of WSNs is to
provide continuous monitoring on pipelines, which helps
people to intervene early enough in case of leakage or burst
incidents. That will highly contribute is saving those
resources and the environment from the severe consequences
of such incidents.
The different techniques and algorithms that are used in
pipeline monitoring problems must find reliable and efficient
devices in order to perform efficiently and properly.
Therefore, a well-designed sensor node is an essential
component in reliable pipeline monitoring system.
Devices that are used in pipeline monitoring applications
must satisfy the unique requirements and needs of those
applications. Energy consumption comes on top of those
requirements due to the fact it is very hard, most of the time,
to replace batteries of nodes that are deployed in remote and
rural areas. Even when energy harvesting is utilized, nodes
must be efficient in utilizing that energy. There two system
components that consume most of the energy: the
microprocessor and the radio. Optimizing the energy
consumption of those two components would greatly
enhance the system battery life.
In this paper, a low-complexity, low-cost, powerefficient, and scalable design of a sensing node for linear
wireless sensor networks is proposed. The work also presents
978-1-5386-2735-8/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/UKSim.2017.40
RELATED WORK
III.
THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
A. The Sensor Node
A sensor node that is equipped with a water flow meter, a
microprocessor, and an XBee Radio is integrated as
illustrated in Figure 1. While there are many physical
quantities that can be measured in order to detect leakage
such as water pressure, pipe surface acoustics, and water
flow rate, the latter is used in this preliminary stage of the
project. Investigating other quantities and combination of
sensors is, however, in the future plans.
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Figure 2. Placing the flowmeter and the sensign node between
pipeline segments
Figure 1. Block diagram of the main components of the sensor
nodes
IV.
EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
The aforementioned node design is implemented on
Arduino platform. This is a prototype where more optimized
implementation is to be done later stages of the project. A
water circulation system is design for test purposes as
illustrated in Figure 3. It consists of pipe segments with
sensor nodes placed in between. Also, there is water pump to
keeps water circulating. In order to mimic a leakage incident,
a tap is placed in a pipe segment between two nodes.
The experiment is carried out as follows: First, the water
pump is turned on allowing water to circulate. Keeping the
tap closed depicts a pipeline without anomalies. Then, the
tap is opened mimicking water leakage of various degrees.
Results that are reported to the Data Center are consist
with expectations. That is, when the tap was closed, a noleakage report is showing while leakage is declared when
then tap is opened.
The processing unit of the sensor node is the
ATmega328/P 8-bit microcontroller [7]. The communication
module is XBee S1 802.15.4 Radio [8]. Finally, the flow
meter is FS300A G3/4 [9]. The Arduino platform is utilized
as a rapid prototyping option in this work.
The nodes are designed identical to each other in order to
form a homogeneous WSN. However, there is only one node
that is designed differently to act as a gate way to the data
center. This node has an extra feature of Wi-Fi link that
connects the networks to the datacenter.
B. Leakage Detection Mechanism
The monitoring system is designed by deploying a set of
sensor nodes that are evenly spaced along the pipeline. That
is, the pipe is segmented into small pipe segments where
each two segments are connected via a flowmeter as
illustrated in Figure 2. That way, the nodes becomes an
integrated part of the pipeline and the water current flows
through the flowmeter allowing the latter to take the required
measurements.
Recall that each flowmeter is also accompanied by a
radio and microcontroller. The flowrate measurement is
processed by the microcontroller. This step involves
comparing the flowrate measured by the current node with
the that measured by the preceding node. A simple algorithm
of difference thresholding is applied. That is, when flowrate
drops beyond 10%, then, a leakage is reported in the pipe
segmented that is located between the two nodes. Of course,
the current node must also communicate its current flowrate
reading to the subsequent node to be used in processing
there.
V.
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
The paper reported the work of designing and
implementing a low-complexity, power-efficient, scalable
monitoring system for water leakage applications. The scope
covers the sensor node and the leakage detection mechanism.
For power efficiency in communication, the low-power
XBee radio was used. The leakage detection is done as
simple thresholding of the difference between readings at
two consecutive nodes.
The system is implemented and tested in the lab.
Experiments show that the system made correct decisions
that are reflect the real situation.
This is a preliminary stage of a log-term project towards
achieving a more advanced system serving in challenging
conditions. More optimized systems are to be designed and
benchmarked against the state of the art in the field.
Figure 3. Water circulation system used in the expiremnts on the propsed system
202
[5]
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