An Optimal Leakage Detection Strategy for Underground Pipelines Using Magnetic Induction-Based Sensor Networks

It is difficult to detect small leakages in underground pipelines with high accuracy and low-energy cost due to the inaccessible underground environments. To this end, the Magnetic Induction (MI)-based wireless sensor network for underground pipeline monitoring (MISE-PIPE) is introduced in [13]. The MISE-PIPE deploys high-density underground MI sensors along the pipelines, which provide necessary measurements for leakage detection with very high resolution. However, in order to provide accurate and low-cost leakage detection based on MISE-PIPE, an optimal deployment and activation strategy for those sensors is needed. In this paper, we provide an optimal strategy to detect leakages in underground pipelines based on the MISE-PIPE framework. Based on the proposed detection strategy, the error bound is derived to characterize the accuracy, while the energy consumption is analyzed to model the system energy cost. By trading off the accuracy and the energy consumption, an optimization function is developed to achieve the optimal performance.