Autonomous Sensor System for Deep-Sea Pipeline Monitoring

We describe an autonomous sensor system for deep-sea pipeline monitoring. It includes an energy-harvesting module, a wireless optical communication system, a MEMS motion sensing processor, a temperature sensor, and an ultralow-power 16-bit microcontroller. The energy harvesting module is composed of a thermoelectric generator, a DC/DC boost converter, and a lithium iron phosphate battery. The optical communication uses a green high-brightness LED and a matching photodetector. The 9-axis motion sensing platform uses a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a magnetometer to track the inertial motion of the pipe. An ROV-mounted receiver is used to retrieve the temperature and motion data from the sensors placed along the flowline via the wireless optical communication link. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such a system was developed and tested.