Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: The paper presents a comprehensive system design and implementation of a prototype for secure data acquisition of water quality parameters in a real time basis using Wireless Sensor Network. Methods/Analysis: The design is based upon under-water sensors for measuring water parameters, interfaced to a Data Acquisition Board attached with a WSN mote. Layered architecture comprising of Mote Tier, Server Tier and a Client Tier has been employed. The system has been developed on TinyOS using TinyECC library and Matlab. Security service to provide data authentication employs a light-weight-key-generation scheme using ECC. A web based application facilitates visualization of sensor data. Findings: Following simulation in Tossim, the data acquisition application was ported to the WSN hardware with security primitives for data authentication. Field trials were carried out at World famous Dal Lake in Srinagar and data related to pH, Conductivity, ORP/Redox, Temperature, Turbidity and Oxidation was accessed remotely through the web application. For the purpose of recording the field location (Longitude and Latitude), a GPS sensor was also integrated to the WSN set-up. The water quality parameters acquired through the Data Acquisition System were correlated with the water quality test reports of standard labs. Energy and computational calculations were carried and benchmarked to ascertain the suitability of the system design considering the resource constraint nature of WSN. The product has the potential of becoming an important constituent of smart water applications as a requirement of smart city. Novelty/Improvement: The field deployable prototype serves as a generic model for monitoring the water quality of any water body like river ,lake , reservoir etc on a real time basis with the novel feature of employing sensor data authentication as a security service. 

Keywords: Data Acquisition System, Key Generation, Real Time Monitoring, Smart Water, WSN