Autonomous sensing for leakage detection in underground water pipelines

Abstract

This paper presents an advanced architecture for autonomous sensing (AS) within underground water pipelines. This AS architecture consists of a free-moving wireless sensor that communicates wirelessly with a relay stations fixed on the ground. This sensor is equipped with a hydrophone that captures the internal state of the pipe by continuously sensing the noise signal. The data is transmitted wirelessly to the relay nodes and then to a central server on real-time basis for further analysis. Advanced algorithms are applied on the data to get useful information about existing or futuristic leakages. A novel experimental setup has been designed and built for carrying out preliminary experiments. The acquired results have shown both the ability to detect leakages and to identify their magnitude.