In-line water safety systems based in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Living in the modern times is becoming more challenging every day. Industrial wastes, pesticides, toxins used from the humans are becoming a real threat for their health. In all this closed cycle the most important is to secure the air and water purity. All the wastes go in the water that we drink and this happens every minute and every hour. Public health threats are major incentives encouraging the development of new technologies for in-line monitoring systems that can optimize operation of the large scale supply networks, prolong service life, evaluate performance and improve the security of water supply to customers. The purpose of this paper is to contribute toward improving the water purity, testing and monitoring the resources where we get the water or in other words the in-line monitoring and control of the water systems. In this paper we study, design and test a new protocol of communication between toxin detecting sensors. This system is going to help with monitoring of water sources in order to signal any change in the toxicity threshold. The protocol makes possible the communications between sensors covering a wide area ensuring the quick and efficient communications with the monitoring centers and updating their respective databases. On the other hand the database entries over a threshold value will cause an alarm for stopping filling water from the respective spot, until the parameters become normal as a result of automated systems interventions. In this protocol only a few nodes will held the communication within a mini cluster of sensors, giving the possibility for good quality and low cost communications. Those mini clusters can be fixed or moving depending from the kind of the water source.