Huge quantities of water are wasted on a daily basis worldwide because of leakages in water-transporting infrastructures causing water shortage, injuries, and so on. This problem is typically worsened by the lack of advanced monitoring systems. In this respect, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have revolutionised water-monitoring systems providing reliable inspection, feasible communication and performing applications. This study presents a comprehensive survey on software and hardware solutions proposed in the literature for water pipeline infrastructure monitoring. In fact, several leak detection and localisation techniques like acoustic, ultrasound or pressure ones are studied and evaluated. Several research works tried to implement these techniques using different types of WSN platforms including microcontroller, digital signal processor, application-specific integrated circuit and field programmable gate array. These platforms are reviewed and discussed while highlighting their advantages and drawbacks. Finally, an integrated energy-aware system-on-chip solution using high-performance hardware is proposed to achieve optimal and reliable results.