Wireless sensor network system: Gas leakage detection and monitoring

Wireless sensing networks (WSN) are the effective means of process monitoring for many environmental phenomena such as pollution monitoring, traffic control, water irrigation, etc. A typical WSN system designed and developed can be made to function effectively to detect and monitor the gas leakages in the industrial sectors. Through this short communication, we report our laboratory efforts taken to design, fabricate, and develop a WSN system that describes the deployment of sensor nodes and successively calibration of the sensor output as a function of the system input (supply voltage). The sensor node attains early gas detection using a semiconductor gas sensor (usually an oxide), an arduino nano microcontroller, an arduino UNO microcontroller, X Bee and an arduino GSM shield. The node receives leaked gas signal from the leakage area and communicate it to the network coordinator wirelessly through the X Bee. When such an emergency is detected, the network coordinator alerts the user by sending SMS through the GSM shield and may autonomously control the source of gas emission through the exhaust fan. The system is further interfaced with an internet server using a Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA) of Lab VIEW software tool. The reliability and productivity of the system are the key concerns and influence the design and development choices for the system in terms of the hardware and software design tools.