Environmental Monitoring
A water environmental monitoring system based on a wireless sensor network is proposed. It consists of three parts: data monitoring nodes, data base station and remote monitoring center. This system is suitable for the complex and large-scale water environment monitoring, such as for reservoirs, lakes, rivers, swamps, and shallow or deep groundwaters. This paper is devoted to the explanation and illustration for our new water environment monitoring system design. The system had successfully accomplished the online auto-monitoring of the water temperature and pH value environment of an artificial lake. The system's measurement capacity ranges from 0 to 80 °C for water temperature, with an accuracy of ±0.5 °C; from 0 to 14 on pH value, with an accuracy of ±0.05 pH units. Sensors applicable to different water quality scenarios should be installed at the nodes to meet the monitoring demands for a variety of water environments and to obtain different parameters. The monitoring system thus promises broad applicability prospects.
Design of Monitoring System
The proposed water environment monitoring system based on a WSN is illustrated in Figure 1. It can be divided into three parts: data monitoring nodes, data base station and remote monitoring center for the water area being detected [9]. A great number of data monitoring nodes, distributed in the water area to be detected, dynamically constitute a monitoring network, in which each node can only collect parameters such as pH, amount of dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity rate and temperature, but also is capable of operating linearization and temperature compensation, data packaging, collected parameter memorizing and routing to a data base station; the data from the monitoring nodes is transferred to a remote monitoring center by the base station via a GPRS network; the monitoring center analyzes and processes the water quality parameters, gives an alarm for emergencies like water contamination, in addition to any sudden changes in water quality, and provides support for decision-making in prevention and remediation of water contamination; the end-user can also realize all-weather detection in the target water area via the Internet. The whole water environment monitoring system presents useful characteristics as large network capacity, flexible disposition, low power consumption, low cost, and a minor influence on the natural environment.