Node placement approaches for pipelines monitoring: simulation and experimental analysis

Monitoring oil, gas and water pipeline networks is a critical problem; its impact has serious consequences on the ecosystem. Placing sensors that monitor these pipelines is a challenging problem. Naturally, a linear topology is adopted which requires careful attention in placing sensors in order to minimise energy consumption, maximise network lifetime and ensure robustness against anomaly. In this work, we have studied two existing greedy node placement approaches via simulation and experimental analysis. First, we have validated experimentally the 31 power levels of CC2420 TelosB chipon and their corresponding transmission ranges. Having more power-level resolution provides more flexible power assignment, which yields less energy consumption and longer lifetime compared to traditional 8 power levels. Second, extensive simulation and real experiments have been conducted. The results demonstrate a considerable drop in power consumption, which can reach 73% and 23% extension in the network lifetime when all 31 power levels are adopted.