2016 International Conference on Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA)

Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Bandung, Indonesia, August 29-31, 2016

Characterization of a Water Level Measurement

System Developed Using a Commercial Submersible
Pressure Transducer

E. Yuliza1,3, R. A. Salam1,3, I. Amri1,3, E. D. Atmajati1,3, D. A. Hapidin1,3, I. Meilano2,3, M. M. Munir1,3,a, M.

Abdullah1, Khairurrijal1,3,b
1
Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences,
2
Geodesy Research Division,
3
Research Center for Disaster Mitigation,
Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung 40132, Indonesia
a
miftah@fi.itb.ac.id
b
krijal@fi.itb.ac.id

Abstract – A water level measurement system employing a
commercial submersible pressure transducer was developed. The
submersible pressure transducer consists of a piezoresistive
sensor configured in a Wheatstone bridge, a signal conditioner,
and a 4-20 mA transmitter. The measurement system is also
equipped with a 4-20 mA receiver for long wire transmission and
an 8-bit ADC contained in an ATmega 16 microcontroller for
further processing and providing water level display. Based on
the characterization of the obtained measurement result, a linear
correlation between the water level and the sensor output was
obtained. It is shown that the pipe diameter and the position of
the sensitive part of the sensor do not affect the sensor output.
This implies that the change on the sensor output is only due to
the level of the water. It was also found that the submersible
water level sensor possesses high accuracy, sensitivity, stability,
linearity, and proper hysteresis characteristics.
Keywords—water level, hydrostatic pressure, submersible
pressure transducer
I. INTRODUCTION
Liquid level measurement is one of the most frequently
discussed topics in recent times due to its substantial role in
various applications such as food industry, pharmaceuticals,
drug manufacturing, chemical industry, power generation, and
various disaster management activities [1-7]. On the other
hand, due to the change in global climate and the increased
frequency of rainfall which trigger the occurrence of various
disasters such as landslides and flood, reliable sensors that can
measure changes of water level is required to predict the
occurrence of possible disasters.
In general, there are two types of liquid level measurement
systems that have so far been developed: continuous level
measurement and point level measurement [1], whereas the
data acquisition methods include measurements based on
radar, electro-mechanical, capacitance, ultrasonic, optical, and
hydrostatic pressure principles [1, 8-12]. Although there are
advantages and disadvantages for each data acquisition
method, the hydrostatic pressure principle was selected due to
mainly measurement environment as well as its accuracy,
stability, linearity, time lag, and durability.
This paper reports a water level measurement system that
was developed using a commercial pressure transducer. This
system is intended to be used for monitoring and measurement
of water level for an early warning system such as flood,
landslide, and tsunami. In order to minimize possible errors
that may occur in the field, the transducer was characterized
extensively through experiments and performances of the
measurement system was examined.
II. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
The development of water level measurement system or
sensor reported in this paper makes use of the hydrostatic
pressure principle. Essentially, this principle describes that the
pressure P at each point in a water column is proportional to
liquid level according to the following hydrostatic equation:
P g h (1)
where ρ is the density of the liquid, g is the gravitational
acceleration, and h is the height of water surface level. In this
study, a commercial submersible pressure transducer
employing a piezoresistive sensor was used [13, 14]. The
sensor is designed as a hydrostatic transducer that measures
the liquid height from bottom of the sensor to liquid surface.
Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the developed level
measurement system, which consists of a commercial
submersible pressure transducer (dash line box), a 4-20 mA
receiver and a microcontroller. The submersible pressure
transducer operates in the following way: when the water level
changes, it causes the pressure received by the piezoresistive
sensor also changes. This results in a change of the resistance

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generated by the sensor in the Wheatstone bridge. The output
voltage of the Wheatstone bridge, which is result from any
change in the water level, is in the order of millivolts.
Therefore, it requires signal conditioner system which is
equipped with an amplifier. Afterward, the output of the signal
conditioning circuit is converted into electrical signal in the
form of direct current ranging from 4 to 20 mA using a
standard 4-20 mA transmitter circuit [14].
 
Fig. 1. Block diagram of water level measurement system.
In addition, the transmission using the rated current is done
to avoid the loss of electrical signal and its possible
attenuation due to utilization of long wires. The transmitted
current output is then converted into voltage in order to
simplify the reading using a standard 4-20 mA receiver circuit.
[15]. The resulting analog voltage output is then converted
into digital data using an 8-bit internal ADC of the ATmega
16 microcontroller. The digital data from the microcontroller
is finally sent to a personal computer (PC) to be displayed.
Fig. 2. Experimental setup: (a) Treatment 1; (b) Treatment 2.
To explore the performance of the developed submersible
water level sensor, a laboratory scale sensor testing system
was designed. According to the principle of hydrostatic
pressure, the pressure in the water column is affected solely by
the height of the water around the sensor. To examine the
ability of the conditioner on the sensor, the construction of the
testing system was designed with varying pipe diameters.
Furthermore, the sensor was placed at different conditions to
investigate the sensor response under various circumstances,
i.e. facing downward and upward as shown in Figs. 2(a) and
2(b), respectively.
The measurement of the water level was conducted with
point level measurement technique. The output voltage was
100
acquired for every 40-cm water level change. To measure the
water level, a roll meter with a resolution of 1 mm was used.
Fig. 2 shows the schematics of the experiment. The
measurement was started at a zero water level and continued
with the increasing water level for pointed levels. The rise of
water level was performed by flowing water through the water
inlet until it reaches the pointed level. The excess of water
level was flown out through the water outlet.
In order to show that the resulting change is only due to
varying height, this measurement was conducted through two
treatments. The first treatment was done using various pipe
diameters of 2 inches and 3 inches. The sensor was inserted
through the bottom pipe of the system so that the sensitive
area of the sensor faces upward as shown in Fig. 2(a).
Furthermore, to investigate the effect of the sensitive area
of the sensor, another treatment was performed. In the first
treatment, the sensitive area was faced upward, while in the
second one, the sensitive area was positioned from the top of
the pipe system, making the sensitive area faces downward as
depicted in Fig. 2(b). Similar to the first treatment, the pipe
diameter in the second treatment was also varied.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Although the employed sensor is commercial one, the
testing of its various characteristics still has to be done to gain
better understanding of its characteristics. The sensor was
tested through several steps of experiment treatments as
described previously. In the first step, the submersible sensor
was characterized to obtain several characteristics such as its
transfer function, hysteresis, and linearity.
Fig. 3. Transfer function curve of submersible sensor
The transfer function was obtained by observing the
relationship between sensor input and output data (cf. Fig. 3).
It was found that the sensor input is responded by the output in
a linear manner according to the following relationship
 V  0.12909 H  2.8 , R 2  0.997   
where V represents the output voltage and H is the water level.
 This result shows a linear correlation between the current and
the water level with 0.6% error.

Fig. 4. Hysteresis curve of submersible water level sensor

Afterward, the characterization of the sensor equipped

Fig. 6. Calibration curve of the 4-20 mA receiver circuit
with the 4-20 mA transmitter circuit was done in order to get
the hysteresis curve. It was obtained by comparing the sensor
In the next step, the designed 4-20 mA receiver circuit was
response in forward mode and reverse mode. The forward
calibrated. The input of the receiver circuit is from output of
mode was done by determining the sensor response to the rise
the 4-20 mA transmitter circuit. It is found that there is a linear
of water level, whereas the reverse mode was achieved during
relationship between input and output of the receiver circuit as
the draining of the water to reduce the height of the level. It is
shown in Fig. 6. The aforementioned characteristics of the
evident that the characteristic curves for the addition and the
sensor with the 4-20 mA transmitter circuit along with the
reduction of water agreed each with each other and that the
calibration curve of the 4-20 mA receiver circuit show a
obtained hysteresis value of 0.15% as shown in Fig. 4. This
relatively ideal device performance due to the accurate output
implies that the sensor would yield constant current value for
of the sensor, adequately assembled instrument system with
every condition or there is no hysteresis on the sensor with a
proper output, and consistent testing setup.
4-20 mA transmitter circuit.

Fig. 7. Sensor response for variation of pipe diameter

Fig. 5. Linearity curve of submersible sensor

The linear characteristic of the sensor with the 4-20 mA
transmitter is shown in Fig. 5 with linear equation as in in (3).
Therefore, the sensor with the 4-20 mA transmitter circuit
fulfills the criteria needed for water level sensing.
 I  0.00743H  4.067 , R 2  0.999  
The next step of the experiment was to investigate the
sensor output under different pipe diameters. Fig. 7 shows the
sensor response at similar height but different pipe diameters.
It can be seen that the output characteristics are similar
regardless of the pipe diameters. It is evident that the pressure
difference is only affected by the level of water and not
influenced by the volume of the water. According to the

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hydrostatic theory, the output condition documented in Fig. 7
only applies for fluids with homogeneous density. For
measurements in granular cases, pressure difference is
influenced not only by the liquid level but also the material
diameter and density [12, 16].
Fig. 8. Sensor response for variation of sensing area
Lastly, the influence of the sensing area position (facing
downward or upward) on the output response was also
observed as given in Fig. 8. The experiment followed that
described in Fig. 2. This measurement involved two wires
with different lengths which led to different output values in
each of the edge of the wire. In the first treatment, a 5 meter-
length wire was employed while in the second treatment a 20
meter-length was used. Additionally, the zero point of each
sensor was different. In this case, a difference of 1 cm in this
sensor with 5 m wire is equivalent to 0.032 mA current
difference, whereas with 20 m wire it is equivalent to 0.008
mA. This would lead to the difference in the reading until 4
times for the same water level. One centimeter error due to
parallax reading would induce a different output voltage.
However, according to the relation between the change of
water level and voltage difference, it is noticeable that both the
sensors possessed similar increase.
IV. CONCLUSION
A submersible water level measurement system employing
a piezoresistive sensor has been developed. The sensor output
was a digital data after processed by an 8-bit ADC of an
ATMEGA16 microcontroller for displaying the water level.
Based on the conducted characterization processes, a linier
correlation between the water level and the sensor output was
obtained. In addition, the pipe diameter and the position of the
sensitive part of the sensor is shown to not affect the sensor
output. These characterization results suggest that the sensor
output only changes due to the water level. It was found that
this submersible water level sensor possesses high accuracy,
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sensitivity, stability, linearity, and proper hysteresis
characteristics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was financially supported by “Program
Unggulan Perguruan Tinggi (PUPT)” Research Grant in the
fiscal year 2016.
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