Abstract The design of sensor placement in water supply pipe networks for the purpose of transient-based leakage localization is investigated. Each sensor is placed at where the Fisher information of measurement concerning leaks is maximized; equivalently, the Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB) representing the lower limit of leak localization error is minimized. An explicit algorithm for computing the CRLB with respect to leak parameters in a general pipe network is developed. The presence of leak is considered as stochastic and modeled in a probabilistic framework by assuming that the leak location follows a probabilistic distribution with a support on the whole network. The optimal distribution of the sensors is then computed via a quasi-Monte-Carlo simulation, where the expectation of the CRLB of leak localization error is minimized. The proposed sensor placement methodology is optimal uniformly over all the leak localization methods, all the potential sensor locations and all the situations of leaks. Four examples from a simple single-pipe system to a complex pipe network are presented to illustrate the proposed methodology.

中文翻译：

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管网中基于瞬态泄漏定位的一致优化多传感器设计

摘要 以基于瞬态的泄漏定位为目的，研究了在供水管网中放置传感器的设计。每个传感器都放置在有关泄漏的 Fisher 测量信息最大化的位置；等效地，代表泄漏定位误差下限的 Cramer-Rao 下界 (CRLB) 被最小化。开发了一种用于计算关于一般管网泄漏参数的 CRLB 的显式算法。泄漏的存在被认为是随机的，并通过假设泄漏位置遵循概率分布并在整个网络上得到支持而在概率框架中建模。然后通过准蒙特卡罗模拟计算传感器的最佳分布，其中泄漏定位误差的 CRLB 的期望值被最小化。所提出的传感器放置方法对于所有泄漏定位方法、所有潜在传感器位置和所有泄漏情况都是一致的。提供了从简单的单管系统到复杂的管网的四个示例来说明所提出的方法。