Acoustic data communication system for in-pipe wireless sensor networks

Sustainability of aging infrastructure is one of the greatest current civil engineering challenges, especially in the case of pipelines, where no direct access is available. Being simultaneously massive and distributed, their normal operation is critical for the health and prosperity of the community. In current practice, the condition of pipelines is assessed by non-destructive inspection techniques. Nonetheless, frequent pipeline failures warrant the continuous assessment of their condition, in order to schedule the maintenance activities accordingly, and assure their safe operation. Continuous monitoring necessitates the deployment of autonomous wireless sensor networks (WSN). This thesis proposes solutions for the communication and power units of a WSN for monitoring underground water pipelines. Regarding the communication unit, it is proposed to use the pipeline as an acoustic waveguide for the transmission of appropriately modulated acoustic waves that encapsulate the digital data, since radio frequency transmission is not feasible underground. The confined acoustic channel imposes severe distortion on the propagating signal. In order to compensate for the dispersion and ambient noise, the proposed communication system employs an elaborate set of signal processing steps, such as Reed-Solomon Encoding, Barker Code Synchronization, Adaptive Equalization, Bandpass Filtering, Stacking and application of Inverse Transfer Function techniques. The robust performance of the proposed system is evaluated and verified by means of numerical simulations and scaled laboratory experiments.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Kokossalakis, George, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Eduardo Kausel.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/34379
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/34379

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34379