Enabling Detection of Plastic Debris on Water Surface Using Wireless Signals

Current systems for monitoring of water surfaces are largely camera-based and remote-sensing based. While remote-sensing based systems have low resolution and cannot provide data for smaller scales of water surface, continuous processing of video footage from vision-based systems can be expensive. In this letter, we propose and evaluate a system for detection of floating debris on water surface by leveraging wireless signals. We detect low-reflecting floating debris such as plastic by sensing their effect on water waves. Such a system can assist the present systems for monitoring of health of water bodies. We carry out our evaluations using a WARP (Wireless Open-Access Research Platform) v3 node and present our initial results for our evaluations in indoor environment and include outdoor data collected over an outdoor swimming pool. The system is able to identify the presence of floating debris and is also able to distinguish between still stagnant water versus water with disturbance and can, hence, also be used to monitor water flow and turbulence.