Investigation of Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are one of the most able technologies in the structural health monitoring (SHM) field. Through intelligent, self-organising means, the contents of this paper will test a variety of different objects and different working principles of sensor nodes connected into a network and integrated with data processing functions. In this paper the key issues of WSN applied in SHM are discussed, including the integration of different types of sensors with different operational modalities, sampling frequencies, issues of transmission bandwidth, real-time ability, and wireless transmitter frequency. Furthermore, the topology, data fusion, integration, energy saving, and self-powering nature of different systems will be investigated. In the FP7 project “Health Monitoring of Offshore Wind Farms,” the above issues are explored.

Structural health monitoring of offshore wind turbines: A review through the Statistical Pattern Recognition Paradigm

“…The result is a more economic sensor platform that has three aims: acquisition of structural response data, local interrogation of collected measurement data, and wireless transmission of that data or analysis results to a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), which comprises other wireless sensing units [34]. As explained in [158], a WSN is composed of four mean stages: communication, data acquisition, processing, and fusion stages. Moreover, WSNs encompass many fields: wireless communication, network technology, integrated circuits, sensor technology, MEMS, among many others.…”

Networking Strategies for Structural Health Monitoring in Wireless Sensor Networks

“…Finally, it forwards the processed data to the data collecting server. Figure 2 shows the software architecture of a WNS node [4,5]. In the figure, Best-effort Single-hop Communication module is used to provide fair wireless medium access.…”

Wireless sensor nodes for generic signal conditioning: Application to Structural Health Monitoring of wind turbines

“…This causes a loose of one of the principal advantages provided by WSN, as it is the lack of using wires. Therefore to obtain the potential benefits of WSN, specially, the low cost, high scalability and ease of deployment, additional studies need to be done and WSN for SHM should be autonomously powered [17].…”