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Sensors & Transducers Innovative Design of Dam Water Level Sensor

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 Sensors & Transducers, Vol. 189, Issue 6, June 2015, pp. 150-156

Sensors & Transducers

© 2015 by IFSA Publishing, S. L.
http://www.sensorsportal.com

Innovative Design of Dam Water Level Sensor

1
Nirupam, 2 Amit Krishna Dwivedi, 3 Dr. S. S. Solanki
1, 2, 3
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
1, 2, 3
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India-835215
2
Tel.: + 919452277333, 3 + 919334424256
E-mail: nirupam.achievers@gmail.com, a.k.dwivedi@ieee.org, sssolanki@bitmesra.ac.in

Received: 10 May 2015 /Accepted: 15 June 2015 /Published: 30 June 2015

Abstract: An innovative design of a water level sensor is reported in this paper. The proposed design is suitable
for high precision measurements usually required in sensing the water level of dams, tanks & reservoirs. This
paper employs a reflected float mechanism in the presented design which helps in sensing the level to be
measured. The proposed sensor design has a simple, reliable and low cost design concept and ease of
installation. For precise measurement, the presented design has been calibrated and tested for level measurement
up to 225 cm and corresponding error have been considered. The error is under acceptable limits i.e. within
± 2 % of the measured value. The improvement in the precision value has been also reported in the paper. The
design is suitable for measuring level in the range of 0.1 cm and it can be improved further as per the
requirement, by simply varying the circuit parameters. Steps utilized to develop the presented design have been
also mentioned to clearly present the design concept and required setup. Copyright © 2015 IFSA
Publishing, S. L.

Keywords: Level sensor, Measurement, Sensor design, Water level measurement.

1. Introduction [3], have been already reported in literature. Still,

With the advent in the technology, various types
of precise sensors have been already reported in the
literature. However, these designs require
modification in their design concepts to meet the
current technology requirements. Dams are artificial
barrier which have high potential risk of eventual
collapse causing catastrophic consequences to the
environment and especially to humans. Dam water
level is generally measured manually, which adds
manual measurement errors. Manual measurement is
also not effective due to various problems such as
difficulties in reaching the measurement site, human
error, low resolution of the measuring instrument,
etc. In the view of above, many automatic water level
measurement systems using mechanical sensors such
as resistive [1, 2], capacitive [2] or magnetic sensor
these sensors have to do direct contact with water that
makes their life span shorter due to chemical and
physical constraints such as corrosion, pressure under
water and so on. Sensors like resistive and magnetic
sensors can measure only the water level at some
points while capacitive sensor can measure the water
level at all points. However, capacitive sensor is
affected by water composition and can affect the
measurement result. From the above discussion it can
be concluded that an effective and highly precise
design of sensor is required that is capable of
surviving in the adverse water level measurement
environment. In the view of above requirements, this
paper makes following contributions:
1) An efficient and highly precise sensor design
for water level measurement is presented.

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 Sensors & Transducers, Vol. 189, Issue 6, June 2015, pp. 150-156

2) Design offers various improvements in the
performance parameters while taking measurement of
the water level, without direct contact with water,
which also increases its life time.
3) Further, the microcontroller is used as a data
processor and controller to other electronic
components utilized in the design presented.
Rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section
III presents the study of conventional sensor design
already available in the literature. The proposed
sensor design is reported in Section II. The
simulation results and discussions are mentioned in
Section IV. Finally, concluding remarks are provided
in Section V.
2. Literature Review on Conventional
Designs
Various designs for monitoring water level of
dams, reservoirs and other water storage such as
tanks, have been already reported in the literature.
This section presents a brief review of these designs
that include pressure type, encode mechanical type,
ultrasonic type and radar type, and so on. These
designs find their applications in measuring water
level in varying situations, which basically depend
upon the measurement requirements and desired
performance characteristics [13-22]. Table 1
summarizes the comparative study of various water-
level measurement techniques already available in
literature.
Apart from these, optical fiber based sensors for
liquid level measurement are also available. For
example, Nathet al. [23] presented a simple intensity-
modulated fiber optic sensor, which is based on
frustrated total internal reflection effect caused by
refractive index change of a medium surrounding an
optical fiber. Khaliqet al. [24] proposed and
demonstrated a liquid-level sensor based on the
refractive-index sensitivity of long-period fiber-optic
gratings. Shenget al. [25] developed a temperature-
independent differential pressure sensor based on two
FBGs. These studies state that the sensor are capable
of providing simultaneous measurements of both the
temperature and the differential pressure, and are
suitable for applications involving liquid level, liquid
density or specific gravity measurement. However, in
the sensors reported above, the liquid level can only
be obtained if the specific gravity of the liquid is
known in advance. However, in most of the general
cases, this specific gravity (depends upon the liquid
characteristic) is not always available which limits
the operation of above mentioned sensing schemes.

Table 1. Comparison of Different Types of Water Gauges.

Pressure Type Encoders/Floats Type Ultrasonic Type Radar Type

• Non-contact
• Extensive range of • Wide Adaptability to • Non-contact measurement is
measurement water quality measurement possible
Advantage
• Convenient • Low power • High measuring • accuracy in
installation consumption accuracy measurement
• wide range
The ultrasound speed
Big cumulative is affected by Expensive; Measured
The precision is
measurement errors temperature and procedure is affected
Drawback affected by the
needs re-calibrated humidity of the by raindrop and snow-
density of water
frequently transmission medium; flake
Small measured range
+0.1~0.3 % of full
Precision + 0.2~0.3 % of full scale + 0.15 % of full scale + 3 ~10 mm
scale
Suitable
< 100 m < 40 m < 0.25 ~12 m < 90 m
Range
< 2 cm @ measured < 2 cm @ measured < 2 cm @ measured
Absolute range < 20 m; range < 10 m; range < 13 m;
Error >2 cm @ measured >2 cm @ measured range >2 cm @ measured +3 mm ~ 10 mm
range > 20 m > 10 m range > 14 m
Cumulative >2 cm monthly
>2 cm daily NA NA
Error

3. Proposed Sensor Design making a direct contact with water. A microcontroller

This paper proposes a simple and reliable design
of water level sensor. The design is developed by
utilizing a light emitting diode (LED) torch as a
source (S) and light depending resistor (LDR) as
detector (D) to measure the water level without
has been also employed in the design to act as a data
processor and controller to other electronic
components such as display, alarms and so on.
Microcontroller based automated water level sensing
systems have been already developed for monitoring
of liquid levels in reservoirs, tanks, and dams etc.

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 Sensors & Transducers, Vol. 189, Issue 6, June 2015, pp. 150-156
Usually, these kinds of systems are utilized to
monitor multilevel as well as continuous liquid levels
but the sensor designs are not suitable for providing
accurate measurements. In the view of above, an
innovative design is presented in this paper for both
continuous and multilevel measurements using
microcontroller by incorporating audio visual alarm
at desired levels and automatic control of dam
outlets. The proposed design mitigates several design
issues of these systems by employing an indirect
mechanism to measure the liquid level. Further, to
understand the design concept, main components and
how they have been accommodated in the developed
design have been reported in following section.
Fig. 1. Block diagram representation of the proposed water level sensor design.
Now, the LED source generates input rays which
fall on the float surface. The surface of the float is
made up of reflecting material (mirror is utilized in
this work to reflect the incidence rays). The reflected
ray from the float surface is detected by LDRs
connected in series. LDRs have been included in the
design because of its simplicity, reliability and low
cost. Thus, the sensor network incorporated in the
design helps in measuring the time taken by the
signal generated by the source (LED) to reach the
detection point. The measurement obtained from the
sensor network undergoes through signal conditioner.
Signal conditioning has been introduced in the design
to obtain proper signal in terms of strength, which
can be processed further. Further, analog-to- digital
converter (ADC) is incorporated in the design to
provide proper interfacing with the microcontroller in
the system. The proposed design is calibrated
according to the requirements. Auto-calibration can
also be achieved through software. Visual alarms and
liquid crystal display (LCD) have been introduced in
the system to monitor the water level. The
microcontroller is programmed according to the
requirement i.e. multilevel or continuous
measurement of the water level.
152
3.1. Sensing Principle and Sensor Modeling
The block diagram of the design concept of the
proposed sensor is demonstrated in the Fig. 1. From
the figure it can be observed that float is placed at the
water surface inside a float guide pipe. The float
guide pipe prevents it from floating off out of the
sensor’s detection range. The bottom of the pipe is
partially closed to make the float stable while taking
measurements. Holes are made in the pipe, so that
maximum amount of water can enter inside the float
guide pipe. The length of the float guide pipe can be
varied according to the dimension of the tank and
measurement range.
3.2. Design of the Sensor Network
Sensor network shown in Fig. 1 consists of source
(LED) and detector (LDR) circuit. Source produces
signals that are incident on the float reflective
surface. Based upon the position of float surface
inside float guide pipe, variation in the time scale i.e.
duration after which the reflected signals are detected
by the LDRs, is obtained. The variation in time scale
is achieved because of the difference in position of
float surface which finally depends upon the water
level to be measured. In general, the path difference
covered by the signal generated by the source is
utilized here to determine the level of water.
The proposed design is firstly calibrated for any
position of float inside the float guide pipe and then
respective path difference is obtained to determine
the water level. For the design presented, the path
difference i.e. difference in distance covered by the
reference signal and signal to be measured, generated
by the source (LED), is determined as
PD = t REF − tMeasured , (1)
 Sensors & Transducers, Vol. 189, Issue 6, June 2015, pp. 150-156

where PD is the path difference, tREF and tMeasured the circuit shown in Fig. 2, various sensing points
represents the time taken by the reference signal and have been marked up to range of 225 cm. A
measured signal, respectively. The variation in multimeter has been utilized to obtain readings across
voltage obtained across the LDRs determines the path the points A and B marked in Fig. 2. Sensor has been
difference in the proposed design. characterized in the terms of voltage as a function of
distance. The laboratory set of the above mentioned
design is shown in Fig. 3.
4. Laboratory Setup and Testing
The sensor design presented in this paper has
been experimentally validated in the laboratory.
Measurement of various multilevel and continuous
has been performed in both increasing and decreasing
water level. This section briefly summarizes the
experimental setup and testing of the proposed sensor
design.

4.1. Experimental Procedures in Laboratory

Five series connected light dependent registers
(LDR1 - LDR5) are soldered in the general purpose
printed circuit board (PCB), to act as a detector
circuit. A low resistance of value 100 Ω is soldered in
series with the series connected LDRs (LDR1 -
LDR5) to act a load. Further, a 5 V power supply is
provided to the circuit. The whole circuit
arrangement is implemented in a PCB as shown in
Fig. 2.
Now to check the performance of the proposed
circuit, a light emitting diode (LED) based torch light
is incident over the series connected LDRs (LDR1 –
LDR5). A reflecting surface (mirror is utilized as a
reflecting surface) is kept opposite to the soldered
PCB. The reflected ray is exposed to the series
connected LDRs (LDR1 – LDR5). Output voltage
across low resistance of value 100 Ω is measured
through the multimeter. Change in voltage is
obtained with change in distance between reflector
and series connected LDRs. For the verification of
Fig. 2. Series connected LDRs and other components
accommodated in a PCB.
4.2. Testing
To verify the design of the proposed sensor in the
laboratory, various readings have been obtained by
the sensing mechanism reported above. Both in the
case of increasing and decreasing levels, readings
have been taken. Same setup has been further utilized
in a water tank filled with water up to the 225 cm.
Both the laboratory setup measurements and the on-
site water level measurements have been carried out
to validate the proposed design. The error in the
measured values have been also tabulated in the table
to clearly illustrate the difference in the measured
value occurred due to hysteresis.

Fig. 3. Experimental set-up of the proposed sensor in laboratory.

153
 Sensors & Transducers, Vol. 189, Issue 6, June 2015, pp. 150-156

5. Results and Discussion Table 2. Sensor output voltage.

It can be observed from the Table 2 that the Increasing Decreasing

output voltage reduces to a very small value with the Distance, Level Level
Error
increment in the distance. This is due to the fact that cm voltage, voltage,
mV mV
the light rays generated form the source are dispersed
5 1989 1979 10
with the increase in distance between the source and
10 1971 1971 00
detector. For this purpose, an instrumentation 15 1897 1895 02
amplifier is utilized to act as a signal conditioner in 20 1810 1850 -40
the proposed design. An instrumentation amplifier of 25 1751 1743 08
gain 2.5 has been incorporated in the design to set the 30 1652 1645 07
output voltage within 0-5 V. To achieving gain of 35 1524 1547 -23
2.5 from the instrumentation amplifier shown in 40 1375 1379 -04
Fig. 4, resistance values utilized in the design are the 45 1248 1240 08
following: R1 = 1.5 kΩ, Rg = 2 kΩ, R2 = 10 kΩ and 50 1109 1121 -12
R3 = 10 kΩ. Further, this work also utilizes a 55 1049 1073 -42
logarithmic amplifier to make the sensor response 60 903 903 00
linear. Logarithmic amplifier circuit is demonstrated 65 798 792 06
in Fig. 4. 70 681 691 -10
75 575 575 00
80 533 532 01
85 490 499 -09
90 477 481 -04
95 460 458 02
100 438 443 -05
105 418 408 10
110 384 383 01
115 332 331 01
120 285 290 -05
125 278 272 06
130 242 240 02
135 230 232 -02
140 217 212 05
Fig. 4. Circuit level model of the signal conditioner 145 206 208 -02
(instrumentation amplifier) along with the log amplifier. 150 199 201 -02
155 182 188 -06
160 174 176 -02
Sensor output voltage is measured across 100 Ω 165 159 160 -01
resistance connected in series with the LDRs (LDR1 170 147 146 01
– LDR5) i.e. between terminals A and B as shown in 175 122 126 -04
Fig. 2. These measurements are taken with the help 180 114 111 03
of a multimeter. Light intensity decreases at large 185 104 101 03
distance which causes very low output voltage. Thus, 190 91 97 -06
the output is passed through the signal conditioner 195 86 85 01
and the logarithmic amplifier to obtain the analog 200 76 82 -06
signal in the measurable range. The ADC employed 205 72 69 03
in the design further processes the output of the 210 66 65 01
signal conditioner to the microcontroller. The 215 58 54 04
alarming system is introduced in the design which is 220 48 44 04
controlled by microcontroller, to alarm if the water 225 42 40 02
level rises above the set level. The LCD connected
with the microcontroller is used to display the water
level in terms of voltage. However, the corresponding This paper presents a very simple design concept
water level measurements can be obtained with the of a sensor for water level measurements. The
help of calibration. components can be easily assembled in PCB and the
Various measurements carried out during testing setup can be arranged as demonstrated above to
process have been tabulated in table II and its develop the presented design. However, the
corresponding plots have been demonstrated in programming of microcontroller can vary according
Fig. 5. It depicts the sensor response as a graph to the user requirements. Certain level of water in any
between distance (cm) and output voltage (mV). The water tanks, dams and so on, can be set to alarm.
output voltage is taken for both increasing and Further, the output level in the form of voltage is also
decreasing levels. Hysteresis is seen almost obtained in the LCD display.
negligible in the sensor response.

154
 Sensors & Transducers, Vol. 189, Issue 6, June 2015, pp. 150-156
Fig. 5. Plot of the measured value ranging
from 5 to 225 cm.
7. Conclusions
In this paper a simple and reliable design of a
water level sensor is presented. The low cost design
is very useful for both industrial applications as well
as onsite measurements such as dams, tanks,
reservoir and so on. The proposed sensor design has
been presented basically for low cost water level
measurement applications. The sensor design utilizes
LED based torch as source and LDR as detector for
experimental measurements. The microcontroller
used in the system facilitates auto-calibration of the
sensor. Alarm feature allows indication for opening
of dam gate outlets. Liquid Crystal Display has been
included in the system for measured water level
display. It can measure the water level up to 225 cm
or more, choosing the appropriate source. The paper
describes development of the sensor and the results
of the laboratory test and onsite measurements. The
ease of installation and low cost of the design
presented makes the design fit for various water level
measurements.
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