Autonomous sensing for leakage detection in underground water pipelines2011 Fifth International Conference on Sensing Technology

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.