An IR Turbidity Sensor: Design and Application.

O. Postolache1, P. Giro2, M. Pereira1, and Helena Ramos2

1.Escola Superior de Tecnologia, IPS, 2910 Setbal, Portugal,

2. Instituto de Telecomunicaes, Av. Rovisco Pais 1049-001, Portugal
E-mails. poctav@alfa.ist.utl.pt, psgirao@alfa.ist.utl.pt, joseper@est.ips.pt,
hgramos@alfa.ist.utl.pt

Keywords: photonic measurements, turbidity, and virtual instrument

1. Introduction

In many environmental applications, maintaining and verifying water quality is very

important. Turbidity (TU) is an indicator often used to find the amount of suspended
particulate mater in water [1]. The particulate matter consists of soils, sand or mud, may
include also algae and other organic particles. One of the definitions for this water
quality parameter is the turbidity is an expression of the optical property that causes
light to be scattered and absorbed rather than transmitted in straight lines through a
medium [2]. It is an ecologically important parameter as the various effects of
suspended solids in aquatic ecosystems are due to their light scattering properties
rather than their absolute mass. High turbidity has detrimental effects on aquatic
ecosystems as decrease in light penetration (limiting plant growth) and fish movements
[3].
Considering the turbidity importance, the present article proposes a new IR turbidity
sensor included in a virtual measurement system. The paper gives the principle of
operation and design of an optical turbidity sensor. The operation of the sensor is based
on illuminating the medium with IR light of selected modulated frequencies and then
measuring the transmission and backscattered light. Many series of measurements are
made with the sensor under discussion based on standard calibration solutions of
formazin. The main aspects of the virtual measurement system and its performance are
also presented.
2. The preliminaries

Turbidity is also defined as " reduction of transparency of a liquid caused by the

presence of undissolved matter". Reduction of transparency can be measured to a
certain extent using scattering and/or transmission of light. The Beer-Lambert law
quantifies both absorption and scattering effects on the transmitted intensity [2]:

I T = I 0 e ( + )l (1)
where IT represents the intensity of the transmitted light through the sample, I0 the
intensity of the incident light on the sample, the absorption coefficient per unit length,
the turbidity per unit length and l the length of the light path.
Referring to how the turbidity sensor works it can be underlined that an infrared light,
generated by an IR emitters set, is directed at the tested sample, the light being
absorbed or scattered in all directions. The amount of light transmitted directly to the
detector (for a transmission scheme) or being scattered directly into the detector
(scattering scheme) is transduced in an electric voltage using an IR photodiode. The
non-linearity of the photodiode characteristics imposes the implementation of advanced
processing techniques to extract the turbidity information.

3. Hardware description

The measurement principle used to materialise the IR turbidity sensor is expressed by

the detection of the infrared light (wavelength of 940 nm) emitted by three LEDs (LT,
LS1 and LS2) (LD271) (Fig.1). On the IR LEDs plane is placed only one IR photodiode
(BPW50) that is used to detect the IR lights corresponding to the transmission and
scattered schemes [4].
The LT is set so as to have the same axis of the IR detector to materialize the
transmission turbidity measurement scheme. The other two IR LEDs are set orthogonal
to the photodetector axis and materialize the scattering turbidity measurement scheme.
 ILS1

scattered
LS1 light

ILT
uIRD
LT D

LS2 transmition
ILS2
light

Fig 1. The 3IR emitter 1IR receiver turbidity measurement cell

The utilization of two scattering LEDs is related to the increase of sensor's sensitivity for
low values of turbidity (TU<10NTU). For higher values of TU (TU>500NTU) one of the
scattering IR LEDs can be automatically switch off in order to reduce the energy
consumed by the sensor, an important feature when the sensor is battery powered.
The IR LEDs control is made using the DIO0, DIO1 and DIO2 digital input-output lines of
a data acquisition board.(National Instruments PCI-MIO-16E-4) (Fig.2).

DIO0
DIO1
ILS1 DIO2

LS1
ILT
uIRD(t)
LT D
ACH0
ILS2 LS2

+5V

DAQ

Fig.2. The virtual turbidity instrument hardware

Based on the "0" or "1" values sent by DIO lines and a switching scheme realized with
V23100 relays, the IR turbidity sensor works in the transmission and/or scattering
configuration. Using the IR LED powered by a constant current is obtained a small
variation of the IR LED total radiant flux variation. An experimental result is presented in
Fig. 3.

100.00
Pn
99.90

99.80

99.70

99.60

99.50

99.40
0 10 20 t(min
30 40 50 60
)
Fig.3. The evolution of IR LED (LD271) emitted optical power evolution versus time in
normalized values

As it is presented in the figure, the global variation of IR emitted power is less than
0.6%. For an hour duration is recorded a larger variation that corresponds to the first 10
minutes, 0.4%, and the variation for steady state functioning is less than 0.2%.
Referring to turbidity scheme timing, it can be underlined that the switch-on period (T)
for each scheme corresponds to T=0.5s. A timing diagram associated to IR LED control
is presented in Fig.4.

ILT(t)
DIO2 DIO1 DIO0 TU scheme
0 0 0 none
t 0 0 1 ls scattering.
T=0.5s 0 1 0 transmission
0 1 1 no applied
ILS1(t), ILS2(t), 1 0 0 ls scaterring
1 0 1 hs scaterring
t 1 1 1 no applied

(a) (b)

Fig.4. The timing diagram and digital control signals

In Fig 4 .b are presented the correspondence between the values of the delivered digital
signals by DAQ and the materialization of different TU schemes. The "ls" and "hs" are
used to express low sensitivity and high sensitivity situations.
The switched on/off period (T=0,5s) of the "nominal" schemes as transmission and hs
scattering permits a higher stability of the emitted optical power and, at the same time,
(referring to turbidity variation of the test sample) it low enough to assure an accurate
turbidity measurement under dynamic conditions. The practical implementation of the
turbidity sensor [5-6] reports measuring times measuring10s that are one order greater
than the one we consider. Referring to the IR detection, an IR photodiode followed by a
transimpedance amplifier (LM324) are used. The amplifier output signal that
corresponds to the received IR light is acquired using ACH0 analog channel of DAQ and
processed by the PC to extract the TU information.

4. Software description

The software component of the virtual instrument performs the main tasks related to the
acquisition and data processing and can be divided in different software blocks. As the
main blocks of the virtual instrument software component can be mentioned the digital
signal generation, the voltage acquisition associated to IR detector channel and the data
processing blocks. Referring to the TU sensor calibration, the IR detector signals
UD(TU)|LT=on and UD(TU)|LS1=on, LS2=on are acquired (4000 samples/s, 1000 samples for
each switch-on period) for the nominal schemes and stored in a file. The TU value used
corresponds to the NIST formazin turbidity standards NTU={10, 20, 100, 200, 800,
1000}. The experimental results obtained on the TU sensor calibration phase are
presented on Fig. 5. In the figure, Un represents the normalized values of the acquired
voltage from IR detector for transmission and double excitation scattering scheme. The
normalization factor applied in both cases is the maximum voltage acquired from the IR
detector block that corresponds to transmission scheme TU=0 NTU (distillate water).
As it is presented in the figure, for the transmission scheme the received optical power
that is proportional to uIRD(TU)|LT=on decreases, where for the scattering schemes the
detected optical power that is proportional to uIRD(TU)|LS1=on, LS2=on increases.
 norm
UIRD 1

0.9

0.8 transmission

0.7

0.6

0.5 scattering

0.4

0.3

0.2 TU (NTU)
0 200 400 600 800 1000

Fig. 5 The graphical representation of calibration characteristics for transmission

scheme (LT=on) and double excitation scattering scheme (LS1=LS2=on)

The non-linearity levels are expressed by non linearity errors that are enLT=2.2% and
enLsi=9.1%. The higher non-linearity requires an additional digital processing that is
made using a neural network (NN) processing architecture.

5. TU processing using NN
Based on the calibration data stored in a file, a NN structure as part of a voltage-to-TU
conversion scheme (Fig.6) is designed in Matlab. The NN architecture used is of the
Multilayer Percepton double input, single output type (DISO)[7] and includes three
layers. The inputs are associated with the TU measurement schemes when the output
corresponds to the TU value. The NN weights and biases (W1, b1, W2, b2) computation
is performed on the NN training phase which is based on a training set, expressed by
the input matrix of the IR detector delivered voltages and an output vector of the NIST
TU values. The used NN training algorithm is Levenberg-Marquardt [8].
Referring to the neurons of the NN these are characterized by different activation
functions. For the hidden layer is used the "tansignoid" function where for the output
 W1
b1
uIRD (0) DIO0
DIO1 W2
DIO2
b2
transmissions.
DIO0=1
uIRD(n-1)
Neural processing TUNN
uIRD(n) algorithm
scattering
IR photodiode DIO0=1and/orDIO2=1
voltage values

Fig.6. The TU neural network processing scheme

layer is used the linear function. A simulation study is performed in order to obtain the
optimum number of neurons for the hidden layer. Some results concerning the NN
capability to model the multivariable characteristic as the turbidity versus transmission
voltage and scattering voltage TU (uIRD(TU)|LT=on, uIRD(TU)|LS1,LS2=on) are presented Fig.7.

(NTU) 2.5 Nhidden=2 neurons

Nhidden=4 neurons
2 Nhidden=6neurons
Nhidden=8 neurons
Nhidden=10 neurons
1.5

0.5

0 TU(NTU)
0 200 400 600 800 1000

Fig.7.The neural processing errors values for different number of hidden neurons

On the figure the Nhidden represents the number of neurons of the hidden layer, (NTU) is
NN turbidity modeling error:
=|TU-TUNN| (2)
where the TU is the turbidity of the applied standard solution (real value) and TUNN is the
value of turbidity after neural processing based on above presented scheme. The
optimal number of hidden neurons for the present sensor is six neurons.
The NN designed and tested structure is a part of the virtual turbidity-meter implemented
with LabVIEW. The NN weights and biases are extracted from the ASCII files obtained
in the NN design (created with Matlab) and used for on-line processing of the acquired
voltages. The LabVIEW sequence of TU computation is.
(a) Normalization ( uIRD(n-1) and uIRD(n) uIRDnorm(n-1) and uIRDnorm(n))
(b) Matrix products calculation
u norm
(n 1)
TU norm = W 2 tan sig W 1 IRD norm + b1 + b 2 (3)
u IRD (n)
(c) Denormalization (TUnormTUNN)
The normalization factors arerepresented by the maximum value of the acquired
voltages and the high limit of the TU measurement operational range that is 1000NTU in
the present application.

6. Tests and results

The virtual instrument for turbidity measurement that include the TU measurement cell
has been tested using different values of NIST formazin standard and also using a
reference turbidity sensor (WQ770). The test samples of TU were obtained using
dilutions of the formazin standards (dilution of 1000NTU standard sample). For the test
samples TUtest={15, 50, 100, 400, 600} the turbidity was measured using the virtual
turbidity meter and the reference turbidity meter. The obtained deviation is within 1% of
FS (FS=1000NTU).

6. Conclusion
The virtual turbidimeter proposed in this paper present the advantage of the utilization of
infrared turbidity measurement cell characterized by low cost, low dispersion of
characteristics, considering the utilization of only one detector for both TU measuring
schemes. The sensor architecture is extremely flexible and allows the measurement of
turbidity according to the configurations generally in use. As part of a virtual system the
proposed IR turbidity sensor can be used for the laboratory measurements (desktop
computer version) or for the field measurements (laptop computer version). The turbidity
sensor can be also implemented as part of microcontroller based turbidity meter that
represents a future development of the present work.

References

[1] ISO 7027, Water Quality, International Standard, 1990

[2] D.Harrison, M. Fisch, "Measurement, Instrumentation and Sensors - Turbidity Measurement", CRC &
IEEE Press, 1999
[3]S. Mylvaganam, T. Jakobsen, "Turbidity Sensor for Underwater Applications" Aanderaa Instruments Inc
Press, 2001
[4] Honeywell - "Turbidity Sensors", http://content.honeywell.com/sensing/prodinfo/turbidity/turbsens.
[5]Global Water, "WQ770 Tubity Meter", Global Water Press,1991
[6]P. Gales, "A comparison of Visual Turbidity with Turbidity Measured by Commercially Available
Instruments", American Society of Brewing Chemist Journal, February. 2000, pp. 101-107.
[7] S. Haykin "Neural Network - A Comprehensive Foundation", Prentice Hall International, USA, 1999.
[8] Postolache O. P. Giro, M. Pereira, "Neural Network in Automatic Measurement System: State of Art
and New Research Trends", Proc. IEEE - IJCNN'2001, Washington DC, July 2001, vol.3-4, pag.2310-
2315.