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Through-Soil Wireless Communication System for Embedded Geotechnical

Instrumentation
Omar Baltaji1; Sijung Yang2 ; Youssef M. A. Hashash3; and Andrew Singer4
1
Graduate Student, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign, USA. E-mail: baltaji2@illinois.edu
2
Graduate Student, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign, USA. E-mail: syang103@illinois.edu
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3
Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign, USA. E-mail: hashash@illinois.edu
4
Professor, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana–
Champaign, USA. E-mail: acsinger@illinois.edu

ABSTRACT
Conventional underground instrumentation systems, embedded in soil, suffer from major
limitations imposed by their wired connectivity. Congestion of instruments and vulnerability of
connections to defects due to human activities and aggressive underground conditions, cause
significant cost increases and robustness limitations. Numerous attempts for developing through-
soil wireless communication systems have been made recently, employing electromagnetic
waves, magnetic induction techniques, and seismic waves, though none has provided a complete
practical and cost-effective communication scheme. In this paper, a biologically-inspired,
through-soil wireless communication system that employs acoustic and seismic waves is
described. Successful data transmission has been achieved in laboratory experiments over 1 m
range at kbps data rates and in the field over tens of meters at tens of bps rates. The deployment
of this system in geotechnical applications and the accompanying challenges are also outlined.
This technology has the potential of impacting geotechnical, geophysical, earthquake, mining,
agricultural, and numerous other applications.

INTRODUCTION
Field instrumentation is an essential component of modern geotechnical engineering projects.
It can help to provide early warnings, reveal unknown underground conditions, evaluate critical
design assumptions, assess contractor means and methods, minimize damage to adjacent
structures, document performance, reduce litigations and advance state-of-knowledge (Dunnicliff
1996, Marr 2007). Core methods, including Peck’s observational method (Peck 1969), heavily
rely on instrumentation in informing and guiding design and construction. Typically deployed in
hostile underground conditions under high soil and water pressures, vulnerable underground
instrumentation systems are often a weak link in geotechnical methods and control systems. To
mitigate this vulnerability, engineers often increase the number of sensors, providing redundant
data (Azzam et al. 2011, Arbanas et al. 2013), which comes at significant added costs.
Underground geotechnical sensors, such as piezometers and accelerometers, are typically
installed in small-diameter boreholes. Instruments are lowered to their specified depths, properly
locked or sealed in place, then connected via wires to data loggers, usually placed near the
ground surface. Other sensors such as pressure cells and extensometers may be embedded in
ground or attached to underground structural elements. With increased experience in
manufacturing sensors, internal sensor failure is becoming less likely. However, the vulnerability

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of wires to damage due to ground deformations, construction activities, and biological and
chemical underground hostility, persists as illustrated in Figure 1. This issue is magnified when
more than one sensor is deployed in a borehole, connected serially, making the sensor cluster no
more robust than the weakest point in its connecting wires. This problem is not unique to
geotechnical applications, but also common to structural, agricultural and mining applications,
among others.

GOING WIRELESS
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Wireless communication systems often provide practical solutions for the wired-connectivity
problem. Existing through-air electromagnetic wireless systems, when employed in structural
projects, have provided cost savings and reduced disruption of operation of existing facilities due
to wire failures (Kim et al. 2007). Dramatic attenuation [reduction of amplitude] of
electromagnetic waves in water severely limit their use for wireless communication in
underwater applications (Che et al. 2010). However, acoustic communication methods have
enabled high-speed underwater acoustic links (Riedl and Singer 2014) as well as lower-speed
longer-range links, leveraging acoustic, rather than electromagnetic propagation, much as
dolphins and whales do for long-range communication, which can be detected thousands of
kilometers away (Costa 1993).
Development of wireless communication systems that are operational underground, had a
similar story. Researchers have tried using electromagnetic waves and magnetic induction
techniques for this purpose, but faced attenuation levels even larger than those underwater
(Akyildiz and Stuntebeck 2006, Sun and Akyildiz 2010), which limited the range of
electromagnetic communication to only a few meters in most attempts, if relay devices were not
used, and required expensive equipment and materials. Electromagnetic propagation through soil
was found to be highly sensitive to soil water content, making losses even more severe as water
content increases. (Ikrath and Schneider 1968) employed seismic waves to send data at
extremely low data rates, using a system too large for borehole applications and which is not
fully embedded.
Realizing these limitations and inspired by animals, such as moles and elephants that use
mechanical waves for communication through soil (Randall 2001, O’Connell-Rodwell 2007), the
authors developed a low-cost, compact, underground wireless digital communication system that
employs acoustic waves. A full description of the system, and the phases of its development is
explained in (Yang et al. - in review). In brief, the system was developed by 1) studying the
properties of acoustic propagation in soil, which enabled selection of appropriate frequency
ranges characterized by low attenuation in soil while allowing for acceptable data rates, 2)
characterizing the soil channel response to acoustic waves through laboratory and field
experiments, 3) developing a suitable communication system for the characterized channel,
testing it in laboratory and field tests exploring communication ranges and data rates, and 4)
designing and implementing a compact source for borehole installation capable of operating at
low power. A maximum communication range of 50 m was achieved, transmitting data at a rate
of 24 bps using a high-power source. A maximum data rate of 2 kbps was achieved over a range
of 30 cm using a medium-power speaker. Using a custom-designed low-power source prototype,
a maximum communication range of 10 m was achieved, transmitting at 4 bps. This prototype
was sufficiently compact to fit in a 4-in-diameter borehole and consumed 9 W.

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SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
A basic communication system is composed of a signal transmitter, propagation channel, and
receiver. A communication signal is made of a basic signal, called carrier signal, which is
modified in various ways, thus encoding it with information. This modification, termed
modulation, can modify its frequency (e.g., frequency-shift keying: FSK), its amplitude (e.g.,
amplitude shift-keying: ASK), or phase (e.g., phase-shift keying: PSK). When passing through
the channel, the modulated signal experiences distortions based on properties of the channel.
These include contamination by noise, attenuation by viscous and radiation damping, and
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dispersion [separation of component frequencies of a wave] due to multi-path effects and

frequency-dependent attenuation. Thus, the received signal typically requires filtering and
equalization [adjustment of component frequencies of a wave] to mitigate the noise and
dispersive effects of the channel. In order to learn some of the effects of such impairments on the
transmitted signal, training data is often sent as a preamble before the intended information, such
that, after training, an equalizer can mitigate many of the effects of the channel. Additionally,
forward error correction (FEC) is used to encode the transmitted information, such that errors
can be detected and corrected in the output.
When designing this communication system, many factors had to be considered. Frequency-
dependent attenuation of acoustic signals in soil, which controls the maximum communication
range, was measured at 10 decibels/meter (dB/m) or more in some studies (Oelze et al. 2002),
with higher frequencies attenuating more severely than lower frequencies. While lower
frequencies suffered lower attenuation, the resonance frequency of speakers, typically used as
acoustic sources, is inversely proportional to their size, so operating at very low frequencies
would require large speakers. The size of the system also controls its cost and practicality of
deployment. Power consumption, which is a function of source size, represented a third major
consideration.
One way to mitigate attenuation is to exploit low frequency ranges close to the seismic range
~20 Hz, since attenuation exponents of acoustic waves in soil are approximately linearly
proportional to frequency (Kibblewhite 1989). A small-size thumper-type acoustic source can
transform electric signals into a series of mechanical pulses at low frequencies while consuming
low power. Contrary to most of commercial high-power subwoofers capable of generating
continuous and linear low-frequency acoustic waves in air, thumpers can generate strong discrete
mechanical pulses resulting in higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) by transforming electrical
energy into kinetic energy through the thumper head.
The proposed system developed in (Yang et al. - in review) includes a thumper employing
On-Off keying (OOK), a form of ASK, where a logical '1' is represented by a series of fixed
mechanical pulse repetitions, while for a logical '0' there is no signal. The OOK-modulation
scheme projects no energy for '0' symbols in a binary sequence. Restoring binary sequences from
this modulation scheme is straightforward: at each time slot of a symbol-period duration, a
simple energy detection scheme gives reliable information on the transmitted sequence.
However, since the received signal may be heavily distorted from propagation and contaminated
by noise, several post-processing operations are required at the receiver. First, high-frequency
thermoelectric noise is filtered out through low-pass filters implemented in both digital and
analog means. To mitigate effects of multipath propagation, an adaptive decision feedback
equalizer is used, which nonlinearly compensates the effects of delayed responses of previously
transmitted symbols. Finally, symbol decisions can be made by simply thresholding the outputs
from the equalizer. The process of modulation and demodulation with these post processing

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techniques is summarized in Figure 2. While this system doesn’t include a feedback loop, which
if to be implemented might require adding a source to the receiver side and a receiver on the
source side which doubles the number of transducers, data can be still communicated reliably.
This is done by adding proper level of redundancy, via the forward error correction (FEC)
scheme. This error correction method without feedback is reflected via the results below,
appeared to be sufficient for correcting errors and thus establishing ‘reliable communications’.
A geotechnical instrumentation system can benefit from such a system by simply equipping
each embedded sensor with an acoustic source, while equipping an embedded data logger with
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an acoustic receiver and a programmed processing unit. The acoustic source may be integrated
within the sensor body, connected to it via a short wire, or via electromagnetic communications
which are functional over very short ranges, depending on the sensor requirements and
installation conditions. Sand is poured and compacted around acoustic sources and receivers to
reduce coupling losses, thus increasing achievable ranges and data rates. A schematic of such
setup is shown in Figure 3. The system can include as many sensors and data-loggers as
convenient, as long as the spacing is limited by the maximum communication range and
transmission is coordinated to avoid inter-source interference.

SAMPLE RESULTS
The system above was tested in a field site south of Champaign, Illinois, USA. Tests were
performed in the top two layers: a 1-m thick top layer characterized as desiccated organic clay
(w0 = 16, LL = 57, PI = 32) and a lower layer characterized as unsaturated organic silt (w 0 = 26,
LL = 40, PI = 17). The source and receiver we lowered into two boreholes 0.5 m deep and
spaced 6 m apart. The holes were then gradually filled with sand, compacted well to ensure full
contact with surrounding soil. A sample transmitted signal traveling 6 m along this channel is
shown in Figure 4. The signal, which is 3.3 seconds long, is OOK-modulated, representing a
logical ‘1’ by a +1 amplitude, while representing a logical ‘0’ by a zero amplitude. The electrical
signal is then transformed into a mechanical wave: a +1 amplitude is transformed into 4 full
repetitive thumper strokes. The transmitted signal is then received by a hydrophone. It is
however distorted from the original transmitted signal. The equalizer adjusts the effects of the
frequency-dependent scattering from multi-path propagation and absorption, transforming it to a
close approximate of the transmitted signal. The symbol decoder finally makes decisions on the
symbols of the equalized outputs, mapping soft symbols having values larger than 0.5 into
logical '1', and symbols having values smaller than 0.5 into logical '0'. The sample signal shown
is recovered without error as decoded.
Performing a larger scale test, the system was used to transmit data of a piezometer cluster
composed of two piezometers. The data included piezometric elevation readings taken every 2
hours over 275 days. The whole time-history, composed of 74,000 bits, was sent within 6 hours
including resting times of the system to prevent the circuit and motor from overheating.
Readings were collected via hydrophones 3, 6, and 10 m away from the source. The source and
the receivers were embedded at a depth of 0.5 m. Results corresponding to the 6-m hydrophone
are presented in Figure 5. The signal was successfully restored but suffered from bit-errors
reflected in the observed spikes. To mitigate these residual errors, forward error correction
(FEC), (a rate 2/3 convolutional code), was adopted to detect and correct bit errors from the
symbol detector.
With the achieved 10-m range, a single receiver may be capable of covering a sphere 10 m in
radius, acquiring information from possibly tens of transmitters installed within by a multiple-

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access method in the system. The data rate achieved, although low compared to that of most
common data communication systems, is suitable for typical geotechnical applications where
sensor readings are required once to a few times a day. If a piezometer is equipped by the
thumper- prototype developed and was required to send a reading every day, the battery would
theoretically last 45 months, making it convenient for most short to medium-period geotechnical
projects. As a prototype, the design of the small source is not yet fully optimized. Future studies
are expected to enhance its range, power-consumption, and size.
The installation of the system was straightforward, when compared to previous tested
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systems, including wired sources. It is interesting to report that a rodent, which is thought to be
one of the threats to wired systems was found in one of the boreholes during testing.

Figure 1: Cartoon showing common wired instrument challenges

Further testing of this system is required before being adopted by industry, including tests at
medium to large depths, and in saturated soil deposits, which were not performed here. The
system is expected to perform well at greater depths, benefitting from typically stiffer soils or
rocks, characterized by higher propagation speeds and lower damping ratios, translating into
lower attenuation coefficients. Although field tests in saturated soil deposits were not performed,
laboratory tests performed by the authors confirmed that acoustic communications in saturated
sand is also possible. While most tests were performed in low acoustic noise conditions, a
number of them were performed in the presence of gas-fueled electric generators that produced
intense vibrations, or during windy or rainy days. The system performed well – all bits were

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correctly restored - in these situations, except for receivers very close to the generator (in a
radius of 3m), in which case the noise saturated the receiver dynamic range masking any
received signal. The shallow installation depths used in testing magnified this issue, but since
such shallow installations are not typical, this issue is not anticipated to be problematic for
deployed systems. Transmission timing algorithms, exploiting low-noise periods, for example
when noisy equipment is not operational (as in night hours), or periodic noise-filtering
algorithms can be applied to overcome this issue. Timing algorithms can be also employed to
avoid interference of waves from different sources operating simultaneously.
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CONCLUSION
A wireless digital communication system developed by the authors was used for transmitting
geotechnical sensor data through soil over a maximum range of 10 m using a compact power-
efficient acoustic source. The test was performed in a natural soil deposit and instruments were
installed in boreholes, making the testing conditions similar to typical conditions of geotechnical
projects. The technology will be able to serve many other disciplines such as agricultural
monitoring, infrastructural sensing, and mining communications.

Figure 2: Schematic of the communication system, showing the stages the signal undergoes
The current system is composed of one source and multiple receivers, yet larger systems
could include multiple sources and receivers. Developing protocols for optimizing such
networks, benefitting from record redundancy for reducing error rates, and developing sensor
layouts to maximize range and minimize the number of required receivers would be worth
pursuing. The current transmitter prototype cost is approximately 300 USD, using a high-end

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voice coil actuator (VCA) motor for research purposes, yet the cost can be greatly reduced at
larger production quantities.
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Figure 3: Schematic of a simple underground instrumentation system employing the

developed wireless communication system

Figure 4: Plots of a sample transmitted signal, and its corresponding received signal (top),
which was then equalized then decoded (bottom)

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Figure 5: Original data sent through transmission system, restored data (without error
correction), and restored data (with error correction), for two piezometers

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Dr. Richard
Fragaszy for the financial support of this work under grant number NSF CMMI 1643025. The
views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views
of NSF.

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