Cost-Effective Radar Sensors for Field-Based Water Level Monitoring with Sub-Centimeter Accuracy

2026-01-06

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study addresses the limitations of conventional water level monitoring methods, which are often costly and spatially constrained, thereby hindering real-time flood management and water resource allocation. To overcome these challenges, this work proposes a non-contact water level monitoring approach leveraging low-cost commercial radar sensors integrated with a statistical filtering algorithm. The proposed method significantly enhances estimation robustness and accuracy in complex environments without requiring intricate calibration procedures. For the first time, the system demonstrates sub-centimeter-level water level measurement accuracy under real-world field conditions. Furthermore, it enables autonomous deployment on unmanned aerial vehicles and robotic platforms, offering a scalable and cost-effective solution for large-scale hydrological sensing.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: State Estimation
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Activity and Plan Recognition

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Water level monitoring is critical for flood management, water resource allocation, and ecological assessment, yet traditional methods remain costly and limited in coverage. This work explores radar-based sensing as a low-cost alternative for water level estimation, leveraging its non-contact nature and robustness to environmental conditions. Commercial radar sensors are evaluated in real-world field tests, applying statistical filtering techniques to improve accuracy. Results show that a single radar sensor can achieve centimeter-scale precision with minimal calibration, making it a practical solution for autonomous water monitoring using drones and robotic platforms.

Problem

• water level monitoring
• cost-effective sensing
• radar sensors
• field-based measurement
• sub-centimeter accuracy

Innovation

• radar sensing
• water level monitoring
• statistical filtering
• low-cost sensor
• sub-centimeter accuracy