Water Leak Monitoring by Means of a Wireless Network of Impedance Sensing Nodes

We present a novel impedance sensor to detect water leaks in water transportation pipes. The system comprises a set of impedance electrodes running along plastic pipes and measuring units. The sensor working principle is demonstrated experimentally with leaks as small as 1 liter volume. The low-power main electronic unit contains a battery, a LoRa radio module and conditioning stages of local sensors (temperature, pressure, flow rate), whereas a remote unit measures impedance to detect leak. The communication among the main unit and remote ones is achieved by the same copper electrodes employed for both impedance sensing, powering and digital communications. Low power design allows a global power consumption below 10 mW/h per day operation.