Deepak Awasthi received his MS in Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE). His research work was supervised by Dr. Azeemuddin Syed. Here’s a summary of Deepak Awasthi ’s MS thesis, Low Cost Smart Water Meter for Residential Communities — making advanced water metering technology affordable as explained by him:
At present, 3.6 billion people (nearly half of the world population) live in areas under high water scarcity according to the World Water Development (UN) report. It is expected that more than 70% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050. Contiguously, the water crisis is a major issue across various cities in the world due to the shrinking of water resources because of climate change, global warming, etc. Hence, it becomes arduous for the water authority to feed and provide potable water to such a large population. Using sensors, ICT (Information and communication technology) and BDA (Big Data Analytics) water resources can be managed and saved for future use. Thus, there is an exigency for smart devices which can provide real-time water usage data.
Today, the privatization of water metering sector is leading to the surge of cost for smart water meter in urban areas. This thesis offers a solution to the problem in two ways: First by designing an affordable smart water meter using available flow sensors in market and other by suggesting a non-invasive approach to counter the issues with the smart water meter having mechanical flow sensor.
Here, an algorithm for calibration of available flow sensors is explained by designing an experimental setup. The experimental results show that the given set up can be used to calibrate various sizes of a flow sensor with an accuracy of ±0.17% to ±1.22%. Then two architectures using GSM and Wi-Fiprotocols are developed for processing the data available from the flow sensor and transmitting to the cloud using the IoT features. Finally, a 3D design is suggested for packaging of a calibrated flow sensor and proposed architecture designed at previous stages to form a complete smart water meter. The experimental and simulation results show that the proposed architecture for smart water meter has characteristics of low power, suitable area and affordable cost.
An alternative flow sensing technique is proposed and implemented to eradicate the constraints of mechanical flow sensor. An ultrasonic signal based clamp-on type flow sensor is presented. The experimental results show that the suggested technique can be useful in designing of water pipeline monitoring system.