Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), which is being employed in Building Automation Systems (BAS), are an effective tool to monitor various parameters and help automate these systems. WSN prove to be more reliable and efficient than traditional systems which employ cabled networks, and are used in various applications like security, appliances control, Home automation etc. But, use of WSN in automating Plumbing systems has not attracted much attention. Implementing WSN to detect pipe failures and ensure a good health of Water and Drainage system is necessary to improve the lifetime of these systems. This paper reviews the work that has been done in implementing WSN in BAS and detection of Pipe failures

Andey, Ameya

Bulbule, Aniket

Lambor, Shilpa M

Malghan, Akshata

Rajput, Sanjivani

Journal of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

JWSN. 2016, 1 
JWSN 2016, 4, 1-0019 
Journal of Wireless Sensor Networks 
ISSN: 2001-6417 
www.wsn-journal.com 
 
Article 
 
REVIEW OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN 
BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS 
Aniket Bulbule, Akshata Malghan, Ameya Andey, Sanjivani Rajput, S.M. Lambor 
Department of Electronics Engineering, Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune 
99,Sudhir Colony,Near Vivekanand Ashram, Akola-444005(0724-2457741).  
Email - ameyaandey13@gmail.com 
Received: 23rd August 2016 / Accepted: 27th
 
August 2016/ Published: 28
th
 August 2016 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), which is being employed in Building Automation Systems 
(BAS), are an effective tool to monitor various parameters and help automate these systems. WSN 
prove to be more reliable and efficient than traditional systems which employ cabled networks, and 
are used in various applications like security, appliances control, Home automation etc. But, use of 
WSN in automating Plumbing systems has not attracted much attention. Implementing WSN to 
detect pipe failures and ensure a good health of Water and Drainage system is necessary to improve 
the lifetime of these systems. This paper reviews the work that has been done in implementing WSN 
in BAS and detection of Pipe failures. 
 
Keywords- Wireless Sensor Networks, Building Automation Systems, Pipe failures 
 
JWSN. 2016, 1 
 
INTRODUCTION 
WSN’s are one of the most promising technologies which is attracting a lot of attention in recent 
times. Because of high costs, more energy consumption and complexity in working with wired 
networks, WSN proves to be a good alternative. It acts as a gateway between the wired world and 
the distributed sensor nodes, hence allowing us to merge both the systems. It employs a clustering 
based network structure wherein small sensor nodes send data to a central server by using various 
techniques. WSN has extensively been used in a variety of applications like military purposes, 
automation in residential and official buildings. WSN is gaining attention in Building Automation 
because of its ability to monitor different parameters, perform analysis and evaluation on the data 
collected and take necessary actions. 
BAS employs WSN to monitor and automate various tasks like controlling electric appliances [1], 
heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) control [2], security [3] etc. Different parameters 
like temperature and airflow, and position of intruder are monitored by the sensor nodes and sent to 
central server using WSN techniques. Use of WSN in BAS allows more flexibility, less energy 
consumption and removes the need for wires. Sensor nodes can be designed to save energy by going 
in sleep mode when not sensing the data [4]. Data aggregation techniques have also been used in 
WSN to eliminate information redundancy and data transfer in compact way [5]. 
Implementing plumbing monitoring in BAS is yet unexplored. Not much work has been done to 
integrate Water Supply and Drainage Management with WSN. Plumbing Monitoring is essential to 
ensure the good health of Pipeline system [6]. Various leakages and pipe failures can affect the 
lifetime of Plumbing System. There is a need to detect these failures and leakages with the use of 
WSN in order to make the detection efficient, convenient and reliable. By understanding the factors 
which lead to pipe failure and leakages, an effective system to monitor these faults can be 
developed. 
In this paper, we present the study of the work done in implementing PMS with WSN. The rest of 
the paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we explain the necessity for implementing Plumbing 
Management using WSN. Section 3 presents the study and survey of the work done in 
implementing WSN in BAS. Section 4 explains various techniques that have been implemented for 
monitoring and detecting the failures in pipes and water distribution networks. Finally in section 5 
we conclude and comment on the scope of future work in this area. 
 
JWSN. 2016, 1 
NECESSITY FOR PLUMBING MONITORING SYSTEM 
Concealed plumbing is a popular system implemented in today’s buildings wherein all the pipes are 
concealed behind walls. Leakage and fault detection is one of the most important issues that need to 
be addressed in concealed plumbing. Due to the concealed nature of pipes it is difficult to detect the 
exact location of the fault. Hit and trial methods are usually the only solution to find these faults. 
Hence, a need for a contiguous detection system employing sensors and WSN techniques arises. 
Use of WSN to detect leakage and faults is yet unexplored to a great extent.  
Using different sensors to sense parameters such as temperature, pressure, humidity and water flow 
along with a defined wireless network topology to transmit the information to a central server is the 
most important aspect of PMS using WSN. Research regarding the effects of temperature in cold 
regions [7] has shown that pipe freeze occurs when temperature falls below 20 F. It is not necessary 
that leakages occur at the location where ice blockage happens. Instead, continuous freezing causes 
water pressure to increase downstream, which leads to pipe bursts.  
Plumbing Monitoring System (PMS) can use temperature sensors to facilitate the detection of 
failures caused by temperature irregularities. Pressure sensors can be placed at suitable distances to 
monitor change in pressure which can potentially cause pipe bursts. Because of blockages, pipes 
may experience internal pressure and it may eventually lead to leakage. By monitoring the pressure 
continuously and comparing it with set threshold values, it can be ensured that pipe failures don’t 
occur because of excess pressure. Two flow sensors can be used to track blockages at pipe bends. 
Humidity sensors can also be employed to detect leakages effectively. If at all any leakage occurs, 
humidity sensor will detect the increase in moisture around the pipe, which has been caused by the 
dripping of water from the leakage spot.  
We observe that PMS are vital to detect forthcoming faults; thereby preventing hazards like pipe 
bursts and hence, WSN are the best solution for handling problems related to plumbing systems. 
 
WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN BUILDING AUTOMATION 
SYSTEMS 
Building automation systems monitor and control HVAC and help to manage building facilities, 
automation of meter reading etc. WSNs comprise of battery-powered nodes which are connected 
with the base station for a task. One of the most important aspects of WSN is the lifetime of its 
nodes and its energy consumption, since sensors have to operate with limited energy [5]. Battery-
powered nodes become dead after prolonged use which may lead to disruption of WSNs operation. 
JWSN. 2016, 1 
Using energy in a well-organized way is necessary to increase the lifetime of WSN’s. Qidfen Dong 
et al have used a clustering-based network for building monitoring that is inspired by LEACH (Low 
Energy Adaptive Cluster Hierarchy) method [7]. Two main ideas are used to implement the 
clustering-based network. 
 1) The configuration module of building management software, which does not consume node 
energy, is used to conduct all nodes in a room forming a local cluster. 
 2)  Cluster-heads cannot directly transmit packets to the sink node due to limited wireless 
communication range and are represented by a multi-hop tree rooted at the sink node. 
 
                                 Figure 1: Wireless Sensor Network for building monitoring 
In WSNs, an important method called data aggregation is used for the transmission of data. It is the 
process of compressing locally, the data gathered by the sensor nodes so that only compressed data 
travels across a number of hops to their destination. The sensor nodes keep their transceivers off 
most of the time in order to preserve their batteries and these are the sleep periods of the nodes. If 
the nodes sleep for long periods, the tree construction time is divided by the number of hops. For a 
fixed maximum delay, this allows us to extend the sleep periods and save energy. This comes at the 
price of an aggregation tree with degraded performance [8].  
Thus techniques like energy consumption of nodes, clustering based network and data aggregation 
are further used to improve the efficiency of WSN. 
 
PIPE FAILURES DETECTION 
Implementing PMS in BAS is needed, since one of the important objectives of BAS is “To monitor 
and correct the system and also to alert or sound alarms when needed”. Some work has been done in 
detecting pipe failures. Sean Morefield et al have used acoustic sensors placed at an effective 
distance of 1000 feet to detect the leakage’s position. The method is effective in detecting leakage 
as small has 0.1gal/hr and applicable on wide range of pipes. The Government of India has 
established a Standard code for practicing plumbing multi-storied buildings in India wherein they 
have mentioned the estimation of water supply demand, distribution system, design of pipelining 
JWSN. 2016, 1 
system, pumping system, standard water pressure, flow rate and back flow, and pipe materials and 
specifications.  
M.Bergman et al [9], in their paper have shown that their procedure proves to be an efficient and 
reliable method in estimating the probability of pipe break failures in nuclear pipelining. The paper 
suggests that larger the pipe diameter, smaller is the failure probability. Moreover leak detection is a 
very important factor in order to maintain a low failure probability. It also concludes from the 
various case studies performed that with Detection limit for leak rate, d=0.3kg/s, inspection must be 
done every 3 years.  John Rostum [10] has used statistical models for predicting failures for each 
pipe in a water distribution network and determined whether or not the already existing data in 
Gemini VA is sufficient input for these models. The author has made 2 classes of regression models 
for prediction failures:-  1) Proportional Hazard Model (PHM) which is generalization of survival 
data analysis in which he suggests use of a parametric model like Weibull PHM instead of Cox’s 
semi-parametric mode l.  2) A counting process (i.e. Non homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) for 
which a computer program was developed to estimate the maximum likelihood for the parameters in 
the NHPP. The author has found that Model predictions were more reliable for groups of pipes 
(network level) than they were for individual pipes and minimum number of observations was 
required to obtain reliable model results. The author did a case study for the water network in 
Trondheim, Norway from which it was difficult to draw definitive conclusions yet the author 
suggests that the NHPP appears to be better at predicting pipe failures than the Weibull PHM 
approach. 
               M.J. Fadaee and R. Tabatabaei [11] have presented a statistical model for predicting 
failures for each pipe in a water distribution network. The author modeled the effects of failures 
modes and repairs using a modified power law. Using their model in numerical examples for urban 
water network, they concluded that after each repair, water network failure intensity is reduced to a 
great extent. Also the parameters of the model have been calculated by Maximum Likelihood 
Estimation (MLE). Also Instantaneous Intensity Failure (IIF) and other such cumulative failures 
have been estimated. Such statistical models prove to be a useful tool to detect Pipe failures. 
              We observe that various models have been developed to facilitate the detection of pipe 
failures. However further work needs to be done to implement these models in a practical way in 
order to detect pipe failures by using WSN.  
 
 
 
JWSN. 2016, 1 
CONCLUSION 
Review of existing work in the Building Automation System domain suggests that pipe failure can 
be detected effectively. Different types of bends and shapes of pipes can lead to different types of 
pipe failures. Study of the effect of temperature, pressure and the types of pipes on the pipe failure 
probability is needed in order to establish a strong relationship between them. Also, implementing 
WSN in PMS will require a focus on parameters like battery life of the nodes, energy routing 
protocols, data aggregation techniques, parameters monitored by the nodes etc in order to make the 
system more efficient, reliable and cost effective. We further aim to work on fault detection in 
Water Supply and Drainage Management System in high-rise buildings using Wireless Sensor 
Networks. 
 
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2016© By the authors; licensee JWSN. This article is an open access article distributed under the 
terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license.  
 


REVIEW OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

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REVIEW OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS IN BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

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