RFID in-pipe moisture sensing system for oil and gas quality monitoring in Qatar

Advances in the RFID technology has made it universally present especially in the field of logistics for goods tracking. However, more and more applications are emerging enabling RFIDs to be used in a abundance of unique scenarios. Presence of moisture in an LPG, LNG pipe can decrease the quality of the gas and is one of a major problem for the industry. A wireless monitoring system using low frequency RFIDs as moisture sensors can detect the received energy of the transmitted signal using our proposed energy detector algorithm which is used extensively for spectrum sensing in Cognitive Radios to prevent such hazards. In this paper, we have employed a simple Energy Detector concept to exploit the renowned behavior of the RFID's signal reception and energy absorption with diverse environments. The decision for presence of moisture was made using the threshold values of the energy detector. The experiments were also performed in Wireless Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University at Qatar to verify the simulation results and the channel impulse response. In this study, we have shown that the RFID system can be able to send information regarding the presence of moisture for quality monitoring of liquefied gas and enable us to detect and make decisions on the basis of the energy detected from the RFID antenna system.