Leak Detection and Location of Water Pipes Using Vibration Sensors and Modified ML Prefilter

This paper proposes a new leak detection and location method based on vibration sensors and generalised cross-correlation techniques. Considering the estimation errors of the power spectral densities (PSDs) and the cross-spectral density (CSD), the proposed method employs a modified maximum-likeliho...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jihoon Choi, Joonho Shin, Choonggeun Song, Suyong Han, Doo Il Park
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2017-09-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/9/2104
Description
Summary:This paper proposes a new leak detection and location method based on vibration sensors and generalised cross-correlation techniques. Considering the estimation errors of the power spectral densities (PSDs) and the cross-spectral density (CSD), the proposed method employs a modified maximum-likelihood (ML) prefilter with a regularisation factor. We derive a theoretical variance of the time difference estimation error through summation in the discrete-frequency domain, and find the optimal regularisation factor that minimises the theoretical variance in practical water pipe channels. The proposed method is compared with conventional correlation-based techniques via numerical simulations using a water pipe channel model, and it is shown through field measurement that the proposed modified ML prefilter outperforms conventional prefilters for the generalised cross-correlation. In addition, we provide a formula to calculate the leak location using the time difference estimate when different types of pipes are connected.
ISSN:1424-8220