International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014

Solar based advanced water quality monitoring system

using wireless sensor network
R.Karthik Kumar, M.Chandra Mohan, S.Vengateshapandiyan, M.Mathan Kumar, R.Eswaran

Abstract- Underwater wireless sensor network is the simple and

basic way to monitor the quality of water using wireless sensor II.SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
network (WSN) technology powered by solar panel. To monitor
the quality of water over different sites as a real time application, Water is essential resource of life for each living organism
a base station and distributed sensor nodes are suggested. A on the earth. In examining quality of water, oxygen level
WSN technology like zigbee is used to connect the nodes and
plays important role in water. Health issues of human,
base station. To design and implement this model powered by
solar cell and WSN technology is a challenging work. Through plant and living organisms on the earth depends on water
WSN various data collected by various sensors at the node side quality. Rain, riversand lakes are the main sources of
such as pH, Turbidity and oxygen level are sent to base station. water. Rain water running over the lands contains many
At the base station collected data is displayed as visual and is useful as well as harmful contents, may be soluble or
analyzed using different simulation tools. The advantage in this insoluble. Salt and particles in soil decides the acidity of
system is low power consumption, no carbon emission, more water. An insoluble particle mixed in the water degrades
flexible to deploy at remote site and so on. usefulness of water for particular application, where
traditional measure of water quality is transparency.
Keywords: WSN, Redox sensor, pH sensor, Turbidity, NTU.
To measure the oxygen level, acidity, and
I.INTRODUCTION
st turbidity of drinking water as well as water that may be
In 21 century there were lots of inventions, used for agriculture and industrial process is the main aim.
development, globalization and so on, but in that time
Water quality measurement parameters by remote access
there were pollutions, global warming and so on are also
and by using wireless communication facilitates quality
be formed, because of this there is no safe drinking water
control, record keeping and analysis using simulation
for world’s population. Where dirty or contaminated water
software at base station. The parameters that are analyzed
is used for drinking purpose without any proper treatment and control to improve water qualities are oxygen level,
in many developing countries. The reason for this is the
pH and turbidity. The objectives of idea implementation
lack of water quality monitoring system and which creates
are as follows.
serious issues.
To take preventive actions for quality maintenance  Measurement of pH, Oxygen level and Turbidityof
we got an idea that a system should be implemented to water using sensors at remote place.
monitor the quality of water in easy way, so it can easily  To avail local power supply to sensor nodes using
analyze some of the critical and important factors of water.
solar energy.
Various environmental parameters such as temperature,
 To collect data from various sensor nodes and send it
pH, oxygen density, turbidity and so on from water can be
to base station by wireless channel.
collected by these systems using different sensors. The
development of  To control data communication between source and
WSN technology provides us approach to real time data sink nodes. ( Synchronization using time division )
acquisition, transmission and processing.In general the  To simulate and analyze quality parameters for
user can get real time water quality data from faraway, but quality control. ( Graphical and numerical record
in this system there are several nodes and a base stations using VB & MATLAB )
where each node contains a group of sensors and the nodes  To publish the corresponding record over web for
are distributed in different water bodies. By those sensors public information and further assessment of water
in water the collected date is sent to base station via WSN resource.
channel. Basically a PC with Graphic User Interface
The detailed block diagram of water quality
(GUI) for user is used as a base station. To analyze the
water quality data and when water quality detected is monitoring system is shown in Figure 1.
below preset level, Alarm is automatically raised. Using
various simulation tools the recoded data can be analyzed
for future correspondence and actions.

ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2014 IJSETR 385

 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014

Zig Bee
Solar plate

MAX 232
Input
from IH20

Micro
controller

Fig.2 Circuit diagram of IH20 sensor interfacing.

B.Oxygen sensor interfacing

pH sensor Redox sensor Level sensor Since ARM controller requires 0-3V voltage to
decide logic level (0 or 1), it is required to use amplifier
and conditioning circuit to increase the voltage and current
level of output from Redox sensor. Redox probe generates
a voltage proportional to the amount of free oxygen in the
water in the range of 0V to 95V. This sensor is used to
FIG a. Block diagram of transmitter
measure the density of oxygen in water. The main
difficulty of measuring voltage across these probes is that
the output impedance of the probe is very high, so a high
Power supply
input impendence component is chosen to match it. The
Redox interface circuit is shown on figure 3.

PC MAX 232 Zig Bee

FIG b. Block diagram of receiver

III.HARDWARE DESIGN

We are going to discuss the detailed design of pH sensor

interfacing, oxygen sensor interfacing, turbidity sensor
interfacing and solar power module in this part.
Input from
A.pH sensor interfacing redox

The high accuracy pH probe IH20 is used as a pH sensor

which has output voltage from -412mV to 412 mV. The
theoretical output of the IH20 pH probe is approximately Fig.3 Circuit diagram of Redox sensor interfacing.
59.16 mV/pH at 25°C, i.e. for acid output voltage is
positive, for neutral it is null and for base it becomes C.Turbidity level sensor interfacing
negative with 59mV per unit pH starting from null. This Turbidity sensor is to measure the clarity of water, the
output voltage is affected by environmental temperature output voltage range represents turbidity value ranging
thus it is required to compensate the temperature factor. from 0 to 4000NTU (Nephelometric turbidity unit) Output
The necessary arrangement is done to compensate the of circuit is 0~5V which is transferred to 0~3v compatible
temperature effect as shown in Figure 2. Output of IH20 to ARM controller. The Turbidity level sensor interface
sensor is converted in to 0~2.5V range which is further circuit is shown on figure 4.
given to 89S52 processor for processing.

ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2014 IJSETR 386

 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014

the bottleneck of the system. Using wires to connect nodes

to power lines nearby is not practical, because the nodes
Input from usually distribute in remote places, and the total expense
turbidity sensor in connecting all these nodes is unbearable. Another
method is to use battery only. The advantages are obvious,
but batteries have limited lifespan and cannot stand for a
long time. Replacing depleted batteries regularly is
inconvenient. To avoid unnecessary work and make the
system more flexible to deploy, solar panel is to use in this
system to supply power for the sensor node, together with
the battery to recharge when solar power is not enough,
such as night.

Fig.4 Circuit diagram of Turbidity level sensor interfacing. The output voltage and power of the solar panel
used is 13.5V, 1.5W. Since the sunlight changes day and
D.Zigbee module interfacing night, a battery with 12V output is needed to store and
maintain the output voltage of the solar power module.
A wireless technology like Zigbee works on standard When the sunlight is strong and solar panel outputs higher
IEEE 802.15.4 protocol & operates on unlicensed bands than 12V, the regulator turns on, thus solar panel powers
worldwide at the frequencies 2.400-2.484GHz, 902- remaining blocks and battery is in charging mode. When
928MHz and 868.0-868.6MHz. Low cost, low power the sunlight become poor, the regulator turns off & the
(3.3V), and up to 65000 nodes with an AES encryption whole sensor node is powered by 12V battery. Solar
standard for communication are the main advantages of Charging controller 12 V/DC, 6 A [M149] is used as a
Zigbee. Figure 5 shows interfacing of Zigbee with regulator to convert 13.5V into regulated 12V DC. Figure
controller board. 6 below shows the detailed diagram of solar power
module.

12V
rechargeable
Solar Regulator battery
panel (M149)
(13.5V, 12V DC
1.5W)

Fig 6 Solar panel power regulation & storage

F.ARM- Base control

All sensors and Zigbee modules are connected to the

ARMcontroller board designed for special compact
spaceapplication using surface mount technique. RISC
processorarchitecture of LPC2148 (ARM7) has many
advantages inwater quality monitoring system such as low
powerconsumption, low cost, optimum baud rate and
maximumoperating frequency (12MHz). On chip ADC is
fascinatingfeature of ARM processor that facilitates direct
interfacingof sensors to ARM board and reduces space.
Fig 5 interfacing of zigbee with MC 3.3V powerconsumption of ARM controller is much lesser
thanavailable power from solar module.
E.Solar panel interfacing
In a practical water quality monitoring system, where
sensor nodes are distributed in remote sites, power supply
has become an extremely important issue, sometimes even

ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2014 IJSETR 387

 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014

the base station. A PC with graphic user interface (GUI)

for user is a base stationto analyze water quality data or
IV.SOFTWARE DESIGN alarm automatically when water quality detected is below
preset standards.
Software design approach for water monitoring system is
based on three parts, first is ARM programming, GUI
design in VB and MATLAB simulation of results obtained
from base module. Detailed flowchart for the working of
whole system as well as software design is shown in figure
7.n this system we used MATLAB graphical
representation for measuring the various levels of water
quality like Ph,turbidity,oxygen level. our proposed
flowchart representation is explained as follows

Start
Fig.8 Snapshot of GUI of results displayed on PC.
Collect data VB reads
from sensor HyperTerminal

Data is being YES

VB displays &
sent to ARM
converts data into
format (.txt)

MC will show the

data on LCD &
sent it to Zigbee
Time lap
complete?
Zigbee transmit
the data

NO

Data received .txt files are read

by Zigbee at by MATLAB Fig.8 Graphical results in MATLAB displayed on PC
Base station
Graphical result in MATLAB is the hourly representation
of data collected day wise shown in fig 9. The
Control action can be
Received data is taken by observing comparisons between results are used to monitor the
given to the PC comparative graphs seasonal water quality and environmental accidents under
water.
Data at Base station is
sent it to
Stop VI.APPLICATON & FUTURE SCOPE
HyperTerminal  This system checks quality of water at the places
where generally it is inconvenient to take frequent
tests manually.
 The running water over particular land gets mixed
with salt and other materials which change the pH
Fig.7 Flow Chart for General Workflow of water value and turbidity. It is easy to monitored and control
quality monitoring system the water pollution by this process.
 The higher turbidity and imbalanced of pH in water
ARM programming is done in Keil uVision4 IDE supply used for drinking, agriculture and industry use
software. GUI on PC to display collected data is designed is a serious issue. At such place the quality control
using VB 6.0. For comparative day wise graphical analysis can be done by monitoring and necessary action for
of data collected from sensor nodes is done in MATLAB quality improvement.
7.1.
In order to monitor quality of water in various sites, future
V.RESULT AND DISCUSSION works can be focused on establishing a system with more
The graphical user interface using VB 6.0 is shown in sensor nodes and more base stations. Nodes and base
Figure 8. Through WSN channel data collected is sent to stations are connected as WSN, the different base stations

ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2014 IJSETR 388

 International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2014

are connected via Ethernet. The Ethernet can also be

connected to internet so the user can just login to the
system and get a real time water quality data faraway.

The wireless data acquisition from remote places and

database storage is the supporting structure of the system
which can be used for further research studies like soil
content analysis using different simulators. The simulation
can be used for water pollution control in varying
conditions. Also it can be used to guess abnormal
moments in sea stomach by measuring the turbidity at the
sea shore.

VII.CONCLUSION

Sequential follow up of water pollution status in remote

region can be archived by monitoring the quality of water
& collecting comprehensive data. This system not only
provides comprehensive evaluation of water environment
but also can quickly discover urgent water pollution
accidents or natural disasters, transferring the abnormal
water quality information to monitoring center by quicker
communication network and provides graphical references
for the decision making department to comprehend the
status of the disaster to establish the prevention and cure
policy.

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ISSN: 2278 – 7798 All Rights Reserved © 2014 IJSETR 389