Energy-Efficient Ultrasonic Water Level Detection System with Dual-Target Monitoring.

Sanggoo Kang,Suyun Ham,Muil Yang,Dafnik Saril Kumar David,Yin Chao Yu

doi:10.3390/s21062241

Sanggoo Kang, Suyun Ham + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s21062241

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Abstract

This study presents a developed ultrasonic water level detection (UWLD) system with an energy-efficient design and dual-target monitoring. The water level monitoring system with a non-contact sensor is one of the suitable methods since it is not directly exposed to water. In addition, a web-based monitoring system using a cloud computing platform is a well-known technique to provide real-time water level monitoring. However, the long-term stable operation of remotely communicating units is an issue for real-time water level monitoring. Therefore, this paper proposes a UWLD unit using a low-power consumption design for renewable energy harvesting (e.g., solar) by controlling the unit with dual microcontrollers (MCUs) to improve the energy efficiency of the system. In addition, dual targeting to the pavement and streamside is uniquely designed to monitor both the urban inundation and stream overflow. The real-time water level monitoring data obtained from the proposed UWLD system is analyzed with water level changing rate (WLCR) and water level index. The quantified WLCR and water level index with various sampling rates present a different sensitivity to heavy rain.

Highlights

Floods are one of the most frequent natural disasters, causing costly damage to infrastructure and property and causing injuries and fatalities
Flash floods that cannot be drained in time cause urban inundation without stream overflow
This paper presents works conducted to overcome key technical barriers for operating a remotely controlled water level detection unit in terms of low-cost and power-efficient ultrasonic water level detection (UWLD)

Summary

Introduction

Floods are one of the most frequent natural disasters, causing costly damage to infrastructure and property and causing injuries and fatalities. Methods using the bubble gauge, float gauge, and pressure sensor are applied for a longer time than the method utilizing the non-contact distance sensor, such as ultrasound sensor [7] and radar [8] Those devices are hard to maintain when the proper installation points are limited with additional efforts to measure the level on the site and frequent maintenance [1]. We apply a dual-targeting system, which is the first study to monitor the water level on both pavement and streamside for the urban inundation and stream overflow monitoring. For this purpose, we develop and introduce a low-cost UWLD unit using a single-MCU system and cloud computing platform. The findings reveal the potential for water level monitor presenting water level changes in higher sampling rate on both pavement and streamside and demonstrates the energy efficiency of the developed unit

Methodology

Water Level Detection

15 Operating mode

Rel2a0tion of Water Level Changes by UWLD System and NOAA 15

Findings

Correlation of Node 1 and Node 2 UWLD System