Date of Award

12-31-2016

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Campus-Only Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor

Ali Abedi

Second Committee Member

Mohamad Musavi

Third Committee Member

John Vetelino

Abstract

Stormwater runoff pollution has been identified as a major environmental and health safety issue all over the regions of world. Water quality monitoring is the first step required for viable water resources management. Traditionally, water samples are collected in a thoroughly acid-washed polyethylene bottle from the site and immediately transported to laboratories for analyzing physio-chemical parameters of water. This conventional approach of water quality monitoring does not provide real-time data and is very time-consuming and uneconomical. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a cost-effective water quality monitoring device. In this thesis, a wireless water quality monitoring device that was designed and built at WiSe-Net lab (funded by NSF) was used to gather real-time data comprising of conductivity, temperature, and pH of the distilled water, acidic and basic water. The overall objective of this thesis is data collection, verification, and performing statistical analysis. Further studies were carried out to demonstrate sensor response to show correlation relationship between the parameter pairs. This study suggests the correlative response is caused by the introduction of contaminant and implies that this type of phenomenon can be utilized for detection of the presence of acidic or basic contamination. The battery life time vs duty cycle and battery capacity results from the power analysis can help with power optimization.

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