Energy-Aware Pipeline Monitoring System Using Piezoelectric Sensor

A pipeline can be damaged through a variety of ways and means. If the pipeline damage is directly connected to safety problems, an urgent need to continuously monitor the pipeline exists. For such continuous monitoring, a wireless sensor network has recently been regarded as a solution. However, existing techniques consume a large amount of energy, it is therefore very hard in practice to employ sensor nodes that have limited energy resources. In this paper, we propose a pipeline monitoring system based on piezoelectric sensors to replace the existing high-power-consuming sensing system. The system consists of wireless impedence nodes that are operated with energy-aware software techniques. The experiments conducted in a real pipeline test bed show that the proposed system, indeed, detects pipeline structural deformation and also manages the monitoring system continuously with a guaranteed operation time.