Wireless sensor network: Water distribution monitoring system

Historically, wireless sensor networks have mainly addressed military applications. However, in recent years, many civilian applications, such as managing inventory, monitoring product quality and monitoring disaster zones have emerged. Various technical issues, such as power consumption, radio propagation models, routing protocols, sensors etc need to be considered for different applications. In this paper, we propose a particular application for wireless sensor networks, specifically a water distribution network monitoring system. We propose a possible communication model for the water distribution monitoring network, and describe our channel measurement approach for the determination of an appropriate path-loss model. The accuracy of the proposed measurement approach has been confirmed using the flat earth two-ray model [1].