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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. X, APRIL 2014 1
A Low-Cost Sensor Network for Real Time
Monitoring and Contamination Detection in
Drinking Water Distribution Systems
Theofanis P. Lambrou, Christos C. Anastasiou, Christos G. Panayiotou, and Marios M. Polycarpou
AbstractThis paper presents a low cost and holistic approach
to the water quality monitoring problem for drinking water
distribution systems as well as for consumer sites. Our approach
is based on the development of low cost sensor nodes for real time
and in-pipe monitoring and assessment of water quality on the y.
The main sensor node consists of several in-pipe electrochemical
and optical sensors and emphasis is given on low cost, lightweight
implementation and reliable long time operation. Such implemen-
tation is suitable for large scale deployments enabling a sensor
network approach for providing spatiotemporally rich data to
water consumers, water companies and authorities. Extensive
literature and market research is performed to identify low cost
sensors that can reliably monitor several parameters which can
be used to infer the water quality. Based on selected parameters
a sensor array is developed along with several microsystems
for analog signal conditioning, processing, logging, and remote
presentation of data. Finally, algorithms for fusing on-line multi
sensor measurements at local level are developed to assess the
water contamination risk. Experiments are performed to evaluate
and validate these algorithms on intentional contamination events
of various concentrations of escherichia coli bacteria and heavy
metals (arsenic). Experimental results indicate that this inexpen-
sive system is capable of detecting these high impact contaminants
at fairly low concentrations. The results demonstrate that this
system satises the on-line, in-pipe, low deployment-operation
cost and good detection accuracy criteria of an ideal early
warning system.
Index TermsWater Quality Monitoring, Flat surface Sensors,
Turbidity Sensor, Multi-Sensor System, Sensor networks, Arsenic
& Bacteria Contamination Detection.
I. INTRODUCTION
Clean drinking water is a critical resource, important for the
health and well-being of all humans. Drinking water utilities
are facing new challenges in their real-time operation because
of limited water resources, intensive budget requirements,
growing population, ageing infrastructure, increasingly strin-
gent regulations and increased attention towards safeguarding
water supplies from accidental or deliberate contamination.
There is a need for better on-line water monitoring systems
given that existing laboratory-based methods are too slow to
T. Lambrou, C. Panayiotou and M. Polycarpou are with the KIOS Research
Center for Intelligent Systems and Networks and the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus. (e-mail:
{faniseng,christosp,mpolycar}@ucy.ac.cy)
Christos C. Anastasiou is with the Department of Civil Engineering,
Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus. (e-mail: c.anastasiou@frederick.ac.cy)
This work was supported by funding from the European Research Council
under the ERC Advanced Grant (FAULT-ADAPTIVE) and by the European
Project EFFINET (FP7-ICT-2011-8-31855).
Manuscript received December 19, 2013; accepted March 20, 2014.
develop operational response and do not provide a level of
public health protection in real time. Rapid detection (and
response) to instances of contamination is critical due to the
potentially severe consequences to human health.
Traditional methods of water quality control involve the
manual collection of water samples at various locations and
at different times, followed by laboratory analytical techniques
in order to characterize the water quality. Such approaches are
no longer considered efcient [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Although,
the current methodology allows a thorough analysis including
chemical and biological agents, it has several drawbacks: a) the
lack of real-time water quality information to enable critical
decisions for public health protection (long time gaps between
sampling and detection of contamination) b) poor spatiotem-
poral coverage (small number locations are sampled) c) it is
labor intensive and has relatively high costs (labor, operation
and equipment). Therefore, there is a clear need for continuous
on-line water quality monitoring with efcient spatio-temporal
resolution. US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)
has carried out an extensive experimental evaluation [6] of
water quality sensors to assess their performance on several
contaminations. The main conclusion was that many of the
chemical and biological contaminants used have an effect on
many water parameters monitored including Turbidity (TU),
Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP), Electrical Conductivity
(EC) and pH. Thus, it is feasible to monitor and infer the water
quality by detecting changes in such parameters.
Given the absence of reliable, in-line, continuous and in-
expensive sensors for monitoring all possible biological and
chemical contaminants, our approach is to measure physico-
chemical water parameters that can be reliably monitored with
low cost sensors and develop low cost networked embedded
systems (sensor nodes) as well as contamination detection al-
gorithms to fuse these multi-sensor data in order to infer possi-
ble contamination events. Even though this approach may suf-
fer from some false alarms, it can be compensated/eliminated
by the large scale deployment and the possibility of correlating
the decisions from various sensor nodes which is the topic of
our future work.
There is a clear need for a shift in the current monitoring
paradigm and this paper proposes the idea of monitoring
the quality of water delivered to consumers, using low cost,
low power and tiny in-pipe sensors. The main contribution
of this paper is the design and development of a low cost
system that can be used at the premises of consumers to
continuously monitor qualitative water parameters and fuse
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2 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. X, APRIL 2014
multi-parametric sensor response in order to assess the water
consumption risk. In particular, the contributions regarding
the low cost system is the design and development of low
cost networked embedded systems as well as optical sensors
(turbidity) for water quality monitoring, the development of
event detection algorithms using fusion techniques and the
experimental evaluation and validation of system performance
in various concentrations of microbiologically (E.coli) and
chemically (Arsenic) contaminated drinking water.
The remaining of this paper is organized as follows.
Section II reviews related work. Section III presents the
methodology and justication for the selection of water quality
parameters to be monitored. Section IV presents the system
design and the experimental implementation of the hardware
and software modules. Section V validates the performance
of the developed system and nally the paper concludes with
Section VI.
II. RELATED WORK
A preliminary version of this article has appeared in [2].
In this article, we present an improved hardware platform,
develop a new advanced contamination event detection algo-
rithm and provide an experimental evaluation and validation
of system and event detection algorithms in the presence of
real microbiological and chemical contamination events.
A limited number of on-line, reagent-free water moni-
toring systems are commercially available [7] (e.g. Hach
HST GuardianBlue [8], J-MAR BioSentry [9], etc), but these
systems are bulky (sensors are installed in ow cells located
in cabinets) and remain cost prohibitive for large scale de-
ployments (cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit). It is
worth mentioning that cost is mostly attributed not to sensing
probes but to instrumentation-automation controllers (analyz-
ers) and panels. Such systems can take frequent samples
of the water quality at a very limited number of locations.
However, substantial proportion of contamination problems is
attributable to problems within distribution systems and due
to the limited spatio-temporal sampling, it is impossible for
the water companies and consumers to know the quality of
potable water delivered to consumer households.
A number of bare multi-parametric sensor arrays have been
developed and presented in the literature based on various
sensor technologies. A recent review on multi-parametric
solid-state sensors for water quality is given [3]. A chemical
sensor array for water quality monitoring based on thick-lm
technology is presented in [24], [25] and [26], [27], these
sensors are very low cost, though they have limited life-
time (few months) and require a conventional glass reference
electrode to operate accurately. Along similar lines, a multi-
parametric sensor array based on semiconductor ruthenium
oxide nanostructures is presented in [3], [28].
In addition, several water monitoring microsystems (sensor
nodes) have been developed for large scale water monitoring
based on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technology. In [29]
a sensor node is developed for monitoring salinity in ground
waters as well as the water temperature in surface waters. In
[33], [38], the authors have developed a WSN and an energy
harvesting system (based on a solar panel) to monitor nitrate,
ammonium and chloride levels in rivers and lakes. Energy
harvesting techniques along with hibernation methods play an
important role in extending the lifetime of sensor nodes. A
survey on energy harvesting for WSNs is provided in [39]
and [40]. Finally, in [34] an autonomous boat equipped with
water sensors is proposed to collect samples from lakes using
the A

search algorithm. More efcient navigation algorithms

for a group of boats with obstacle avoidance are presented in
[35], [36], [37].
Next, we provide a number of academic and commercial
efforts aim to develop hardware and software platforms for
real-time monitoring of the water distribution systems. In [41]
a WSN is proposed to monitor hydraulic parameters in order to
detect events such as leaks, pipe bursts. A cost effective multi-
sensor probe (Endetec KAPTA 3000-AC4) for monitoring
chlorine, conductivity and pressure without any event detection
algorithms has been proposed by Endetec [42] in 2012. Finally,
in [43] an optical interferometric sensor along with an event
detection algorithm to monitor refractive index aberrations in
water has been developed.
Apart from the on going research towards the design and
development of sensors and microsystems another parallel
research direction is that of the development of software and
algorithms for the detection of water quality anomalies and
contamination events. A thorough survey on recent advances
in this area is provided in [30]. A limited number of event
detection software is commercially available (Hach Event
Monitor [8], BlueBox [10]). A currently freely available tool
is CANARY software [11] developed at Sandia National
Laboratories in collaboration with the USEPA. CANARY
indicates possible contamination events by using a range of
mathematical and statistical techniques to identify the onset
of anomalous water quality incidents from online raw sensor
data. Other event detection and data validation methodologies
are given in [31] and references therein.
III. METHODS
Drinking water quality standards are determined according
to World Health Organization (WHO) [12] guidelines for
drinking-water quality as well as other pertinent organizations
(i.e. EU [13], USEPA [14]). These organizations set the stan-
dards for drinking water quality parameters and indicate which
microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters must be
monitored and tested regularly in order to protect the health
of the consumers and to make sure the water is wholesome
and clean.
For the developed system, the selection of the physico-
chemical parameters to be monitored was based on extensive
scientic literature review [6], [16], [17], [18] on the relation
between certain physicochemical parameters and chemical
or biological contaminations that present in water. Table I
enumerates the suggested parameters to be monitored from
high to low correlation signicance when interpreting water
contaminations (assess hazard). Table I also presents the mea-
surement cost (for purchase and maintenance) associated with
these parameters based on recent review [19] of measurement
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LAMBROU et al.: A SENSOR NETWORK FOR CONTAMINATION DETECTION IN DRINKING WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS 3
and instrumentation methods, compensation and calibration
procedures and probe lifetime concerning these parameters.
Therefore, the parameters selected to be monitored are the
following: 1) Turbidity, 2) Oxidation Reduction Potential
(instead of Free Chlorine), 3) Temperature 4) pH, and 5)
Electrical Conductivity.
Parameter Units Quality Range Meas. Cost
1 Turbidity NTU 0 5 Medium
2 Free Residual Chlorine mg/L 0.2 2 High
3 ORP mV 650 800 Low
4 Nitrates mg/L <10 High
5 Temperature
o
C Low
6 pH pH 6.5 8.5 Low
7 Electrical Conductivity S/cm 500 1000 Low
8 Dissolved Oxygen mg/L Medium
TABLE I
SUGGESTED PARAMETERS TO BE MONITORED.
It is noted that Free Chlorine concentration (HOCl) can be
approximated based on the ORP, pH and temperature mea-
surements. Free chlorine monitoring is expensive because it is
very sensitive in the pH, temperature, ow and pressure of the
sample. Therefore accurate free chlorine measurements require
a ow cell with additional pH and temperature sensors for
compensation. Nitrates, though considered as an important pa-
rameter for human health is not selected because measurement
methods are subjected to failures (Ion-Selective electrodes)
or are cost prohibitive (UV spectrophotometric method). In
[15], a new promising method is presented based on a PCB
planar electromagnetic sensor. Finally, dissolved oxygen is not
selected due to several compensations and frequent membrane
replacements needed.
Convectional combined electrodes (for ORP and pH) have
been widely used due to their good sensitivity, selectivity,
stability and long lifetime. However, convectional pH glass
electrodes have several disadvantages due to the intrinsic
nature of the glass membrane. For example, they have limited
pressure tolerance, exhibit a sluggish response, require a high
input impedance signal conditioning circuits and it is difcult
to miniaturize based on current manufacturing technologies.
Therefore, a number of emerging-alternative sensor technolo-
gies in various stages of research and development have been
proposed in the literature.
Thick lm chemical sensor arrays developments show that it
is possible to develop a single miniaturized multi-parametric
sensor probe in a cost effective manner, however thick lm
chemical sensors have limited lifetime (few months), suffer
from electrode drift (due to salt loss) and the development of
a stable reference electrode is not possible so far [25]. ISFET
based microsensors (developed using MOSFET semiconductor
technology) offer advantages such small size (mass fabrication
and compact probes), robustness (no glass membranes), low
output impedance and rapid response, however they have
several limitations as they require a glass reference electrode
(REFET) to operate robustly and encapsulation is difcult,
which increases dramatically the nal cost of the sensors [32].
Nano-sensors based on nanostructures of noble metals and
their oxides (like Pt, Ru, Ir) is a recent promising concept how-
ever developments so far suffer from several drawbacks like
temperature dependent delay response and non-deterministic
potential drift (electrolysis of water on oxide surfaces and un-
predictable temperature dependence) [28]. Therefore, despite
the recent advances in sensor development technologies, the
reliability and performance of convectional glass electrodes is
still unsurpassed for continuous water quality monitoring [7].
Therefore, convectional (pH,ORP) glass electrodes and solid-
state sensors (TU, EC, T) are used in this work as they provide
the most reliable technology.
In-line water sensors illustrate the need for efcient and
periodic probe cleaning to maintain reliable measurements.
Cleaning mechanisms constitute an important cost parameter
which can consume as high as 50% of the operational budgets.
Conventionally, ultrasonic, brush, water-jet, or chemical type
of automatic cleaners [20] are used to remove coatings from
the sensor probes. Recently, several alternative cost effective
methods have been proposed that can either actively remove
fouling (e.g. electrolysis) or passively prevent fouling (copper
mesh or CuO
2
doped materials). In this work, at measuring
surface probe method [23] is used because is the most cost
effective, passive self-cleaning method and is based on the
mechanical package and design of the probe. When the
electrodes at measuring surface is exposed to turbulent ow,
the resulting scrubbing action provides a self-cleaning effect in
most applications under medium range ows. The at sensing
surface virtually eliminates deposits that can foul the electrode
and signicantly reduces necessary maintenance. This simple,
but effective method has no moving parts, requires no power
and also prolongs electrode life and eliminates breakage. Addi-
tional antifouling technologies have be proposed for solid-state
and optical sensors based on nano-scale materials possessing
super-hydrophobic properties [21], [22].
IV. PLATFORM DESIGN
A. System and Sensors Development and Integration
The overall system architecture under discussion in pre-
sented in Fig. 1 and is comprised of the following three
subsystems: a central measurement node (PIC32 MCU based
board) that collects water quality measurements from sensors,
implements the algorithm to assess water quality and transmits
data to other nodes, a control node (ARM/Linux based plat-
form) that stores measurement data received from the central
measurement node in a local database and provides gateway to
the internet, visualize data (charts), and sends email/sms alerts
and nally a tiny notication node(s) (PIC MCU based board)
that receives information from the central measurement node
through an interconnected ZigBee RF transceiver and provides
local near-tap notications to the user (water consumer) via
several interfaced peripherals (LED, LCD, Buzzer).
It should be noted that the central measurement node serves
as the sensor node. The idea is to install these sensor nodes
in many consumer sites in a spatially-distributed manner to
form a WSN that will monitor the drinking water quality
in the water distribution system from the source to the tap.
The central measurement node is interfaced to multi-parameter
sensor array comprised of Turbidity(TU), ORP, pH, Electrical
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4 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. X, APRIL 2014
Fig. 1. System architecture.
Conductivity(EC) and Temperature(T) sensors. The in-pipe
Turbidity sensor is constructed from scratch based on our
previous work [1] while the other sensor probes obtained
from SensoreX Corp

. The pH sensor embeds an RTD

sensor which is used for temperature sensing and temperature
compensation of pH and EC measurements. TU, ORP, pH
and toroidal EC sensors have at measuring surfaces for cost
effective self-cleaning. The complete system photo, with TU,
ORP, pH, EC and T sensors as well as a rotor-ow sensor
mounted in a plastic pipe, is shown in Fig 2.
Fig. 2. Complete System Photo.
Turbidity Sensor Development: Although there is plenty
of turbidity measuring instruments available on the market
at the moment, most of them are expensive and not di-
rectly compatible with in-pipe, in-line requirements as well
as WSNs technology. Therefore, the goal is to develop a
low cost, easy to use and accurate enough turbidity sensor
for continuous in pipe turbidity monitoring in water dis-
tribution systems using commercial off-the self-components.
The turbidity sensor development was based on the ratio
turbidimeter design (see Fig. 3(a)) where both transmitted
and scattered light intensities are measured to eliminate errors
(interferences) due to IR emitter intensity drift and sample
absorption characteristics. An infrared (860nm) narrow beam
LED emits light through an optical gap to the water sample
and two IR photodiodes separated around 1cm from the emitter
receive simultaneously the 90
o
scattered and 0
o
transmitted
light. The photodiodes spectral sensitivity are selected to t
with that of the IR light source. The instrumentation and
analog signal conditioning of the sensor is as follows: The IR
emitter is pulsed at 1kHz with a square wave signal and the
photodiodes convert the light directly into electrical current,
then a high-gain, low-noise CMOS (Complementary metal-
oxide-semiconductor) transimpedance amplier with back-
ground light rejection is used to convert the each photocurrent
to voltage output. The ac output of each transimpedance
amplier is then converted to a dc signal using a precision
active peak detector. Finally the 90
o
scattered dc signal is
further conditioned by an instrumentation amplier for 0 NTU
offset nulling and additional amplication. The conditioned
voltage outputs are then sampled by a 10 bit A/D converter
with reference voltage of 1.1V and the sensor output voltage
V =
V
90
o
c.V
0
o
is given as the signal ratio of the scattered V
90
o to
the transmitted V
0
o voltage, c is calibration coefcient.
An indirect method for the sensor calibration was employed,
in order to avoid the use of the carcinogen and expensive
chemical formazin solutions. Therefore, a number of samples
were created and the turbidity of each sample is measured both
by the turbidity sensor under calibration and by a laboratory
turbidimeter (Lutron TU-2016) used as reference. Then the
relationship between turbidity (in NTU) and the voltage output
(in mV) of the turbidity sensor is extracted and given by
TU = 0.1035V 0.292. The sensor generates an output
voltage proportional to the turbidity or suspended particles
and has a linear response in the range of 0-100 NTU with 0.1
NTU resolution. Finally, as shown in Fig. 3 the turbidity sensor
probe was mounted in a at surface PTFE (teon) housing and
sealed in a hydraulic Tee tting for inline installation.
(a) Measurement prin-
ciple
(b) Probe board (c) Flat surface
PTFE housing
(d) Inline Tee
tting
Fig. 3. Turbidity sensor
Apart from TU sensor, analog signal conditioning circuits,
calibration and compensation procedures were developed for
pH, OPR, RTD and conductive/inductive EC sensors. Con-
siderable attention is given to acquire linear response, reduce
noise and attain high resolution and accuracy. A dedicated PIC
based microsystem is developed for each parameter to accom-
plish this task. The rst stage of analog signal conditioning
circuitry for each parameter is presented in Fig. 4 while Table
II shows the results regarding laboratory evaluation (using
standard buffer solutions and reference instruments) of each
parameter along with the quality range suggested by WHO
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LAMBROU et al.: A SENSOR NETWORK FOR CONTAMINATION DETECTION IN DRINKING WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS 5
guidelines and EU standards. The overall power consumption
of the central measurement sensor node with the on board
LEDs off and the RF Xbee transceiver module sending water
quality data every 5s is about 50mA at 5V operating volt-
age, however further improvements are planned to minimize
the power consumption using hibernation schemes. It worth
mentioning that wireless communication is by far the largest
consumer of the energy of the sensor node, compared to other
functions such as sensing and computation.
D
2
1
3
Cf
Vout
Rf
TU Probe
LED
Rl
(a) Turbidity preamplier
2
1
3
Vout
Vexc
Rf
EC Probe
R
(b) Conductivity preamplier
2
1
3
Vout
R2
ORP Probe
R
R1
(c) ORP preamplier
2
1
3
Vout
R2
pH Probe
R
R1
(d) pH preamplier
Temp Probe
NTC or RTD
Vout
Precision current
source <1mA
(e) Temp.
Fig. 4. The rst stage of analog signal conditioning circuitry
The components for the complete system prototype cost
approximately e400 (e300 for sensors-mounts-enclosures and
e100 for microsystems and electronic components) which is at
least an order of magnitude less expensive than commercially
available multi-parameter instruments. It worth mentioning
that site preparation costs will be also minimized if such
low cost and lightweight systems are deployed in consumer
premises instead of buried main supply pipes.
The software platform developed for the control node is
illustrated in Fig. 5. This platform enables real time measure-
ment charts of monitored parameters, real time assessment
of water quality and sensor calibration instructions through
a Graphical User Interface (GUI). It also logs sensor data in
a local database and posts data to web using Pachube open
source web platform. Using Pachube scripts the user can setup
various thresholds for sending notications via sms or email.
Fig. 6 illustrates the main window of the internet platform.
Fig. 5. Software Platform.
Fig. 6. On-line Web Platform.
B. Contamination Event Detection Algorithms
Two event detection algorithms were developed to fuse
on-line multi-sensor measurements in order to assess the
water contamination risk when anomalies are detected. An
event detection algorithm enables the system to act as an
early warning system for possible potable water quality
deterioration at the point of installation (e.g. homes). Both
algorithms are based on normalized sensor outputs given by
N
i
=
|S
i

i
|

i
(1)
where S
i
is the current measurement of parameter i
{TU, ORP, pH, EC},
i
,
i
are the mean and standard de-
viation over a moving time window w and
i
is a sensor
based parameter associated with measurement accuracy of
each parameter i. Normalized sensor outputs N
i
are used to
lter baseline (i.e mean) uctuations.
The objective of the event detection algorithms is to activate
an alarm when normalized sensor outputs exhibit sudden and
signicant changes, given that these changes are bounded
within the quality ranges suggested by drinking water quality
standards (see Table II, quality range). The detection of water
quality changes that are outside the expected quality ranges
(min/max violations) is easier and can be done by a weighted
multi-parameter cost function in the form of R
O
=

i
w
Oi
J
i
,
where J
i
are binary variables that indicate whether parameter
i has been violated and w
Oi
are non-negative weights which
imply the signicance of the violation of each parameter i.
If R
O
= 0 no violation is assumed, however as R
O
> 0
increases the water contamination risk is also increases.
As previously indicated, the objective in this paper is
to detect anomalies when water quality changes are inside
the expected quality ranges by fusing the multi-sensor data.
Therefore a risk indicator R
I
function is dened that takes a
value R
I
= 1 if a contamination event is detected or R
I
= 0
otherwise.
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6 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. X, APRIL 2014
Parameter Measurement principle Units Range Resolution Accuracy Quality Range
Turbidity Optical/infrared scattering NTU 0 100 0.1 0.5 0 5
ORP Galvanic cell, platinum electrode mV -2000 2000 2 10 600 800
pH Galvanic cell, glass electrode pH 0 14 0.05 0.1 6.5 8.5
Conductivity Conductive cell S/cm 100 20000 10 5% 500 1000
Conductivity Inductive cell S/cm 200 3000 10 5% 500 1000
Temperature RTD resistance
o
C -5 100 0.1 0.1
Flow Magnetic rotor, hall effect sensor L/min 1115 0.0015 15%
TABLE II
SPECIFICATIONS AND ACCOMPLISHED PERFORMANCE FOR EACH MONITORED PARAMETER.
The rst event detection algorithm is denoted as Vector Dis-
tance Algorithm (VDA) and the risk indicator R
V DA
I
function
used in this algorithm is estimated based on the Euclidian
distance between the normalized sensor signal vector N and
the normalized control signal vector N
0
of pure (clean) water.
Therefore, the risk indicator R
V DA
I
is given by
R
V DA
I
=
{
1 if ||NN
0
||
2
> d
0 otherwise
(2)
Note that VDA algorithm requires the normalized control
signal vector N
0
as well as a calibration threshold d (obtained
from a learning phase) to execute.
The second event detection algorithm is denoted as Polygon
Area Algorithm (PAA) and the risk indicator R
PAA
I
function
used in this algorithm is estimated based on the ratio of the
polygon area A
N
formed by the N vector components (when
projected (displayed) on a two-dimensional spider graph with
four (TU, ORP, pH, EC) axes starting from the same point) to
the polygon area A
1
formed by the 1 ones vector components
(i.e 1 = [1111]
T
). Therefore, the risk indicator R
PAA
I
is given
by
R
PAA
I
=
{
1 if
A
N
A1
> 1
0 otherwise
(3)
Note that PAA algorithm does not require any further infor-
mation to execute.
V. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
In this section we present the results of the experimen-
tal trials performed to validate the behavior and evaluate
the performance of the developed hardware and algorithms
on intentional contamination events. The experimental setup
consists of the sensor node (central measurement node) that
takes samples every 5s from potable water owing through
a ow cell. Intentional contamination of two important con-
taminants (escherichia coli bacteria and arsenic) of various
concentrations was injected at discrete time intervals and the
performance of the event detection algorithms is evaluated on
real time. Escherichia coli bacteria and arsenic contamination
in drinking water is very severe problem causing serious
poisoning to large numbers of people all over the world [18].
1) Microbiologically (E.coli) contaminated drinking water:
The rst experiment considers the case of microbiologically
(E.coli) contaminated drinking water. Most E. coli strains are
in general harmless to humans, but some types can cause
serious food and water poisoning. However, the presence of
E.coli is used to indicate that other pathogenic organisms
may be present (often of faecal origin). According to WHO
guidelines & EU Drinking Water Directive E.coli parametric
value is 0 CFU/100mL.
Fig. 7(a) presents the measurements received using the
developed sensor node when the following concentrations of
E.coli were injected: 5x10
2
, 5x10
1
, 5x10
0
, 5x10
1
, 5x10
3
,
5x10
4
, 1x10
7
CFU/mL. It is evident that TU and EC sensors
responded well when microbiological contaminants injected
in chlorinated potable water. ORP sensors has responded with
delay and pH sensor has a spiky type of response. Fig. 7(b)
presents the output signals of the Vector Distance Algorithm
(VDA) and Polygon Area Algorithm (PAA). The results of
Fig. 7(b) indicate that both algorithms miss the detection of
5x10
2
CFU/mL because sensors responses were very close to
background levels (no anomalies occurred). It should be noted
that the performance of PAA algorithm is better and given that
it utilizes less information, PAA algorithm is better than the
VDA algorithm.
0
2.1
4.2
6.3
8.4
T
U

(
N
T
U
)
402
465
528
591
O
R
P

(
m
V
)
7.88
7.98
8.08
8.18
8.28
8.38
p
H
843
913
983
1053
E
C

(

S
/
c
m
)

5x10
2
cfu/mL

5x10
1
cfu/mL

5x10
0
cfu/mL

5x10
1
cfu/mL

5x10
3
cfu/mL

5x10
4
cfu/mL

1x10
7
cfu/mL
0 150 300 450 600 750 900 1050 1200 1350 1500
28.55
28.95
29.35
29.75
30.15
T

(

C
)
Time (s)
E.coli
(a) Sensors responses to E.coli bacteria.
0 500 1000 1500
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
Time (s)
R
I

5x10
2
cfu/mL

5x10
1
cfu/mL

5x10
0
cfu/mL

5x10
1
cfu/mL

5x10
3
cfu/mL

5x10
4
cfu/mL

1x10
7
cfu/mL


||NN0||2
AN/A1
R
V DA
I
R
PAA
I
(b) E.Coli bacteria contamination detection.
Fig. 7. Experiments with E.coli bacteria contaminated water.
1530-437X (c) 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/JSEN.2014.2316414, IEEE Sensors Journal
LAMBROU et al.: A SENSOR NETWORK FOR CONTAMINATION DETECTION IN DRINKING WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS 7
2) Chemically (Arsenic) contaminated drinking water:
The second experiment considers the case of chemically
(Arsenic) contaminated drinking water. Water contamination
by toxic heavy metals and especially arsenic contamination
is a common problem encountered in many countries due
to undue deposition of mining, agricultural, industrial and
urban wastes in water resources. Arsenic is known to affect
negatively the mental and central nervous system function, to
damage the blood composition, lungs, kidneys, liver, and other
vital organs, as well as it contributes to certain neurological
degenerative processes and causes skin cancer. According to
WHO guidelines & EU Drinking Water Directive Arsenic
parametric value is 10g/L.
Fig. 8(a) presents the measurements received using the
developed sensor node when the following concentrations of
Arsenic were injected: 5, 10, 25, 50, 125, 500, 1000 g/L. Ar-
senic solutions created from a standard solution of 1000mg/L
As. Unfortunately, almost all sensors did not respond at low
arsenic contamination. However, at concentrations above 25
g/L ORP and pH sensors have responded and at higher
concentrations (above 500 g/L) all sensors responded well.
Fig. 8(b) presents the output signals of the Vector Distance
Algorithm (VDA) and Polygon Area Algorithm (PAA). The
results of Fig. 8(b) indicate that both algorithms miss the
detection of 5 and 10 g/L because sensors responses were
very sluggish and close to background levels and that the
VDA algorithm exhibits two false alarms. Therefore, the
performance of PAA algorithm is again better (sharp response,
no false alarms) than the VDA algorithm.
0
1
2
3
4
T
U

(
N
T
U
)
197
207
217
227
237
O
R
P

(
m
V
)
7.34
7.54
7.74
7.94
8.14
p
H
602
609
616
623
630
E
C

(

S
/
c
m
)

5g/L

10g/L

25g/L

50g/L

125g/L

500g/L

1000g/L
0 150 300 450 600 750 900 1050 1200 1350 1500 1650 1800 1950 2100 2250
20.77
21.17
21.57
21.97
T

(

C
)
Time (s)
Heavy Metal (As)
(a) Sensors responses to Heavy metal (As).
0 500 1000 1500 2000
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Time (s)
R
I

5g/L

10g/L

25g/L

50g/L

125g/L

500g/L

1000g/L


||NN0||2
AN/A1
R
V DA
I
R
PAA
I
(b) Heavy metals (As) contamination detection.
Fig. 8. Experiments with Heavy metals (As) contaminated water.
Finally, it should be noted that the signatures of normalized
sensor outputs can be further processed to minimize false
alarms and to identify the type of contaminants, given that
a contamination library is available/developed.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this article, the design and development of a low cost
sensor node for real time monitoring of drinking water quality
at consumer sites is presented. The proposed sensor node
consist of several in-pipe water quality sensors with at
measuring probes. Unlike commercially available analyzers,
the developed system is low cost, low power, lightweight and
capable to process, log, and remotely present data. Moreover,
contamination event detection algorithms have been developed
and validated to enable these sensor nodes to make deci-
sions and trigger alarms when anomalies are detected. Such
implementation is suitable for large deployments enabling a
sensor network approach for providing spatiotemporally rich
data to water consumers, water companies and authorities.
In the future, we plan to investigate the performance of the
event detection algorithms on other types of contaminants
(e.g. nitrates) and install the system in several locations of
the water distribution network to characterize system/sensors
response and wireless communication performance in real eld
deployments. Finally, we plan to investigate network-wide
fusion/correlation algorithms to assess water quality over the
entire water distribution system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank their colleagues Dr. Evdokia
Kastanos and Dr. Marinos Stylianou for the preparation and
testing of E.coli and Arsenic contaminated water samples.
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Theofanis Lambrou is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at KIOS Research Center
at the University of Cyprus. He received a Diploma degree in Electrical and
Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens,
Greece in 2004 and a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the Univer-
sity of Cyprus in 2011. From 2004 to 2005 he was a Research Assistant at the
microelectronics and electronics sensors laboratory at the National Technical
University of Athens. His research interests include wireless sensor networks,
sensor technologies and signal conditioning, sensors, instrumentation and
embedded networked systems design, water monitoring, decision algorithms
as well as cooperative control for distributed robotic systems, search and
surveillance strategies and motion planning for multi-robot systems. He is a
member of the IEEE.
Christos Anastasiou holds a BS and an ME degree in Environmental
Engineering from the University of Florida. He received his PhD in Civil
Engineering (Environmental Systems Analysis) from North Carolina State
University. He worked as a consultant in the US, Cyprus, and Lebanon, and
as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the American
University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon, and at the Cyprus International
Institute in Association with Harvard School of Public Health. He is currently
the Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering at Frederick University
in Cyprus. His research focuses on mathematical programming / optimization
and the development of decision support systems, especially as these apply
to wastewater treatment and reuse, and agricultural waste management.
Christos Panayiotou is the Deputy Director of the KIOS Research Center
and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the
University of Cyprus. He received a B.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical
and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
in 1994 and 1999 respectively and the MBA degree from the Isenberg School
of Management of the same university in 1999. His research interests include
distributed control systems, wireless, ad hoc and sensor networks, computer
communication networks, optimization and control of discrete-event systems,
fault tolerant systems, resource allocation, simulation, transportation networks
and manufacturing systems. He is a senior member of the IEEE.
Marios Polycarpou is the Director of the KIOS Research Center and a
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus.
He received the B.A. degree in Computer Science and the B.Sc. degree in
Electrical Engineering both from Rice University, USA, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern
California, USA. In 1992, he joined the University of Cincinnati, Ohio,
USA, where he reached the rank of Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering and Computer Science. His teaching and research interests
include intelligent systems and control, adaptive and cooperative control
systems, computational intelligence, fault diagnosis and distributed agents.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE.