Detection of Water Leaks in Supply Pipes With Active Microwave GPR Sensors and Electromagnetic Modelling

DETECTION OF WATER LEAKS IN SUPPLY PIPES WITH ACTIVE
MICROWAVE GPR SENSORS AND ELECTROMAGNETIC MODELLING

D. G. Lymperopoulos, M. Bimpas, Y. Stratakos, N. Paraskevopoulos, D. I. Kaklamani and N. K. Uzunoglu
School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens
9, Iroon Polytechniou Str. Zografos, Athens GR 15780, Greece
Abstract: Accurate and timely detection of leaks in water supply pipes is a significant environmental issue. Development of efficient
non-invasive methods would lead into significant water saving and prevention of health hazards introduced by water leakage. Imple-
menting electromagnetic detection techniques is an innovative approach in locating leaks in water supply pipes, since until now
mainly acoustic detection techniques are utilised. In the framework of the EU funded LEAKING project (Growth Programme
2001), passive (radiometric) and active ground penetrating radar technologies are developed to improve the detection capability of
leaks in water supply pipes. In the present article active methods used to detect leaks and a relevant electromagnetic modelling
method to enhance detection capability are presented.
INTRODUCTION
Driven by the requirements to detect accurately and effectively leaks in water supply pipes, active radar
techniques are considered. Two specific active techniques using wide-band frequency modulation-
continuous wave (FM-CW) and Continuous Wave (CW) are utilised.
In case of FM-CW the operation frequency is between 4.3 5.3 GHz with a 1000MHz linear frequency
sweep, while the CW radar operates at 2.45 GHz frequency. Both sensors are able to operate simultaneously
as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Block diagram of the proposed leakage detection system and ground EM model
DESCRIPTION OF RADAR UNITS
The FM-CW radar operates with a linear up-down sweeping transmitter output while the receiver operates as
a homodyne receiver with zero intermediate frequency output. The system characteristics of the FM-CW
radar are:
- Frequency (centre): 4.8 GHz sweeping 1000 MHz linearly
- Power Output: 500 mW
- Independent Transmit/Receive Antenna: Horn type antennas, with 12 dBi gain
- Receiver Sensitivity: -90 dBm
- Processing: Analog-to-Digital Conversion at 2KHz sampling rate, 4096-point FFT
The CW radar sensor basic characteristics are:
- Frequency: 2.45GHz
- Power Output: 5W
- Independent Transmit/Receive Antenna: Microstrip Cavity Radiator with 14dBi gain
FM/CW
RADAR
DSP
modules
Microwave
Imaging
Technique
CW RADAR
Transmit
Antennas
Receive
Antennas
Air {
0
,
0
}
Ground Layer 1, {
r1,
0
}
Output
Ground Layer 2, {
r2,
0
}
Point
source
URSI EMTS 2004 111
- Receiver Sensitivity: -100 dBm
- Processing: Analog-to-Digital Conversion at 75Hz sampling rate, 4096-point FFT in a Pentium
Processor
The reason of combining FM-CW and CW is to achieve both detection of spatial inhomogeneities inside the
ground medium because of the presence of water caused by the leak and also detection of small Doppler shift
because of the flow of water which is of the order of few Hz. In addition to the two radar modalities, in the
framework of the LEAKING project a passive microwave radiometer is also used to detect independently
the presence of water leaks in supply pipes. The three independent modalities being supplementary are ex-
pected to provide better detection performance in diverse environmental conditions (high detection probabil-
ity and lower false alarm rates).
MEASUREMENT RESULTS
Testing measurements have been carried out in experimental sites and several features of leak detection were
evaluated. The aim of the field tests was to locate water leaks in underlying supply pipes by detecting the
slow leaking water movement and the voids caused by water concentrations. It has been shown that the use
of FM-CW in conjunction with CW radars provides promising results. The following figures provide several
measurements taken from both sensors after A/D Conversion and FFT processing with the aid of the Na-
tional Instruments LabView program.
Figure 2: CW radar measurements on leak point: 2V p-p signal (sec V) and spectrum (Hz dB)
Figure 3: CW radar measurements away from leak: 0,1V p-p signal (sec V) and spectrum (Hz dB)
The CW measurements prove that this active sensor can detect even the very slow movement of water cre-
ated by the leaks. The effect of this movement on the returned signal (Figure 2) is evident, compared to the
weak and noisy signal of Figure 3.
The FM/CW measurements (Figure 4) exhibit the capability to spot inhomogeneities in the ground medium.
The frequency domain can be mapped to the spatial domain linearly, thus providing information about the
structural defects and alterations caused by the presence of ample amounts of leaking water. Indeed, the in-
formation obtained by the linear FM on the vertical axis can be used as a test bed for obtaining results from
the EM modelling algorithm presented in the following section.
112 URSI EMTS 2004
Figure 4: FM-CW radar FFT magnitude (Hz dB): away from leak (left) and on the leak (right)
ELECTROMAGNETIC MODELLING
The two layered ground medium shown in Figure 1 was analysed by applying the Sommerfeld technique
[1,2]. A dipole source inside the earth medium is assumed and then the field in the air medium is determined.
The obtained result has the form of Sommerfeld integrals which cannot be computed analytically [1,4]. Tak-
ing into account the fact that near-field regime is valid, the electric field induced by a dipole source inside
the earth is computed by using a Taylor expansion of the integral terms [3]. By considering all possible di-
pole orientations, a Greens function of the structure is obtained. The result can be written in the following
convenient form:
( ) ( )
__
= =
' ' ' = ' ' '
I
i
J
j
ij
j i
z y x z y x G
1 1
, , o
(1)
where (x, y) is the source point inside the earth, while the observation point is on the origin of the coordi-
nate system on the surface of the earth. The
nm
coefficients are computed numerically and are readily avail-
able if they are computed once. In order to develop an imaging algorithm the inhomogeneities caused by wa-
ter leak are computed by minimizing the error function:
( ) ( )
2
1 1
, , ,
__
= =
_ A ' ' ' =
N
n
M
m
ij
ij l j i m n
x z y x G y x V c (2)
where V(x
n
, y
m
) is the measured voltage at the observation point x
n
, y
m
, and x
ij
is the dielectric permittivity
function described by a cubical basis function inside the earth.
CONCLUSIONS
The present work analyses a novel approach in leak detection techniques, based upon ground penetrating
radar technology. The method proposed here combines a microwave subsurface imaging technique with an
underground movement detector, in order to obtain a more accurate and robust leak detection system. The
measurements have shown the efficiency of the CW radar in detecting the very small Doppler shift of the
moving water, while the FM/CW sensor provides a suitable device for applying the subsurface imaging algo-
rithm shown here. Future work plans include the development of an expert subsystem that translates radar
measurements to simple indications about the probability of water leak existence, a task requiring extensive
field tests in diverse environmental conditions.
REFERENCES
[1] Alfredo Baos, Jr, Dipole Radiation in the Presence of a Conducting Half-Space, Pergamon Press,
New York, 1966.
[2] P. Yl-Oijala, M. Taskinen, Efficient Use of Closed Form Greens Functions for the Electromagnetic
Scattering by 3D Buried Objects, Proceed. 2001 IEEE AP-S Symposium, Vol. 4, 2001, pp. 834-837.
[3] Krzysztof A. Michalski, Extrapolation Methods for Sommerfeld Integral Tails, IEEE Transactions on
Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 46, No. 10, October 1998, pp. 1405-1417.
[4] N. Geng, L. Carin, Wide-Band Electromagnetic Scattering from a Dielectric BOR Buried in a Layered
Lossy Dispersive Medium, IEEE Transactions on Antennas & Propagation, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 610-
619, April 1999.
URSI EMTS 2004 113

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DETECTION OF WATER LEAKS IN SUPPLY PIPES WITH ACTIVE

MICROWAVE GPR SENSORS AND ELECTROMAGNETIC MODELLING

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