A Low-Complexity, Power-Efficient, Scalable System for Linear Wireless Sensor Networks Used in Water Pipeline Monitoring Applications

This paper presents the work of developing a low- complexity, 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.