Comparison of Wireless and Wired Structural System Identification

Abstract

Various research studies have been carried out to improve wireless structural monitoring. The improvements can be categorized into two general categories: data processing (software) and sensors technology (hardware). Advances in data processing offer new strategies for analyzing the data while novel sensor technologies mostly solve the challenges in power consumption and data transmission. These hardware challenges may also be affected by improvements in the data analyzing process which can help in reducing the quantity of data that needs to be transferred and significantly decreases the power consumption. In this study, the random decrement (RD) technique along with the Ibrahim Time Domain (ITD) method were evaluated for modal identification of structures through both wired and wireless sensors. This paper shows how smaller segments of data can be used for extracting the modal properties with similar accuracy. A simple laboratory beam test was performed to compare the data from co-located wireless and wired sensors in the time-domain. Then, the modal identification of the beam through RD and ITD method shows the comparison between wired and wireless structural identification. Additionally, this study investigates the capability of the wireless sensors in providing accurate modal parameters through different data analyzing processes and system identification techniques under actual field conditions. These techniques were used for structural identification of a bridge located in Perry, Utah. The performance and capability of these methods were evaluated and show that detecting the modal parameters of a bridge can be achieved by not transmitting the entire collected package of data.