Efficient campaign-type structural health monitoring using wireless smart sensors

Abstract

Wireless Smart Sensor Networks (WSSNs) have attracted great attention in recent years for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), enabling better understanding of the dynamic behavior of large scale civil infrastructures through dense deployment of sensors. With a fraction of the deployment time and cost compared with wired SHM systems, WSSNs can serve as ideal systems for campaign-type monitoring for (i) short-term, in-service performance evaluation, (ii) postdisaster condition assessment, (iii) design optimization of long-term SHM system before permanent deployment, etc. Efficient data collection is generally needed in campaign monitoring due to limited operation time. A number of improvements have been made to the Illinois SHM Project (ISHMP) Services Toolsuite to facilitate efficient data collection for campaign monitoring. A post-sensing time synchronization scheme is proposed to reduce the latency of data collection while maintaining high accuracy of synchronization of collected data. A multi-hop bulk data transfer approach using multiple RF channels is also implemented to achieve high data throughput.