SewerSnort: A Drifting Sensor for In-situ Sewer Gas Monitoring

Jihyoung Kim, Jung Soo Lim, Jonathan Friedman, Uichin Lee, Luiz Vieira, Diego Rosso, Mario Gerla, Mani B. Srivastava
2009 2009 6th Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks  
Biochemical activities in sewer pipes generate various volatile substances that lead to several serious problems such as malodor complaints and lawsuits, concrete and metal corrosion, increased operational costs, and health risks. Frequent inspections are critical to maintain sewer health, yet are extremely expensive given the extent of the sewer system and the "unfriendliness" of the environment. In this paper we propose SewerSnort, a low cost, unmanned, fully automated in-sewer gas monitoring
more » ... system. A sensor float is introduced at the upstream station and drifts to the end pumping station, collecting location tagged gas measurements. The retrieved SewerSnort provides an accurate gas exposure profile to be used for preventive maintenance and/or repair. The key innovations of SewerSnort are the fully automated, end-to-end monitoring solution and the low energy self localizing strategy. From the implementation standpoint, the key enablers are the float mechanical design that fits the sewer constraints and the embedded sensor design that matches the float form factor and complies with the tight energy constraints. Experiments based on a dry land emulator demonstrate the feasibility of the SewerSnort concept, in particular, the localization technique and the embedded sensor design.
doi:10.1109/sahcn.2009.5168971 dblp:conf/secon/KimLFLVRGS09 fatcat:idtwkd2ngfh5haty6egkz4bk6a