Development and Implementation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for Measuring Water Quality
Bo Sun, Farhad Ahmed, Francisco Retiz, Qin Qian · World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2014 · 2014
Distributed wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a great potential to revolutionize water sustainability research through providing measurements in situ at fine temporal and spatial granularities that were previously impossible. Unfortunately, this potential is still hampered by the poor integration of WSNs into water sustainability research. To address this challenge, after extensive testing of various research products, we report our preliminary and incremental research to deploy a wireless sensor network system from National Instruments. We have built and deployed a prototype WSN and adopted a variety of third-party probes to collect water dissolved oxygen (DO) and water pH values from the pond at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Since September 2013, our deployed WSN has been able to collect DO and pH values consistently and periodically in a real-time manner. Ongoing research is underway to verify the measurements and apply the data to the water quality model.