IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - November/December 2021 - 87

learning curve of the past metering data on the
database. If the verification is correct, the mark
is zero. However, when the verification fails, the
system will ask the data transmission again until
the verification is successful. Repeating this
scheme ten times, if the verification still fails
(marked with " 1 " ), the data are not available.
The system will automatically notice the engineer
to check the water meter and the communication
system.
The database is generated for the bill of each
user. The database includes the current degree
and the previous degree of water meter, to calculate
the amount of water. Also, the data must be
verified to avoid the errors, which is similar to
the previous approach. In a normal case, the verification
code is zero, and the meter data are correct.
To increase the management efficiency, the
users are partitioned to many groups. For analysis,
the current data and the past data are
recorded to database at the control center. Each
recorded data included the serial number of
meter, grouped number, user address, date/time
at the readings, meter readings. The billing of
water dissipation can be automatically sent to
each user with the computations of meter
degrees from the database.
Next, various water meters are compared.
The conventional mechanical meter does not
require to supply the power, and the device cost
is very low. However, it cannot automatically
read the meter readings, which must waste
many human powers. The electrical meter6
records the water flow by the digits, which must
supply the power at all time. The device will
waste energy. The accuracy is near 100%. However,
its built cost is very high because the
device cannot be compatible to the current
water pipeline. The optical meter7 employed a
camera to read the mechanical meter, which
requires digits recognition algorithm. Its computation
is complex, causing the device cost expensive.
However, the accuracy is not enough high
for practical application. The proposed smart
meter employed RF sensing techniques, which
can be compatible to the current water pipeline.
The power supplies to the meters only for data
reading, which can save the energy. The digit
sensing accuracy is over 97%,8 which is higher
than the optical methods. With software
November/December 2021
Figure 5. Structure of water pipelines.
correction method, the accuracy can be further
improved to near 100%.
WATER LEAKAGE DETECTION
SYSTEM
Water pipelines are very long and complex
system, the connection likes tree structure.
Figure 5 shows the basic structure of water pipelines.
The water pipelines may rupture after a
long time use, which causes water leakage possibly.
The water source is from the water company
to users through many branch nodes. The first of
branch node is noted as B11, and the total nodes
of the first layer are B1n (n:0m). Assume that
the water is supplied through the second and
third layer (B2n, B3n) to users, one can add
smart water meters at the branch nodes for the
leakage detection. If the water leakage is
between B13 and B12n at the water pipeline section
A1, the value of B13 will be larger than that
of B12n, the water leakage can be detected. If the
water leakage is the second section A11 between
the branch nodes B12n and B21, the B12n meters
will be larger than B21, it also can be detected.
By similar approach, if the water leakage is at
the end of user U1 at the section A1221, the
water company can find B13 metering value that
is larger than the summation of all water meters
U1, U2,... Un, such that this branch causing the
water leakage is confirmed. Then, checking is
done in the section A1 with the meters B12n, the
section A12 between B12n and B23n, and the section
A122 between B23n and B34n. If there are no
leakages, the leakage section would be among
the branch nodes B34n to the users U1-Un. The
searching range can be reduced to the section
87
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