Low‐power global navigation satellite system‐enabled wireless sensor network for acoustic emission localisation in aerospace components

Abstract

Summary Structural health monitoring systems for the localisation of acoustic emission (AE) events have been developed in the past few years for aircraft components. However, these systems still require complex and heavy electrical wiring for each sensing device and sophisticated algorithms for the localisation of AE signals, which inevitably increases both weight and costs. This paper reports the creation of a low‐power (few hundred mW) and low‐weight (~30 g) global navigation satellite system‐based wireless sensor network for the identification of AE events in aircraft structures. Each wireless node is instrumented with a low‐power micro‐controller, a radio frequency wireless transceiver, an analogue‐to‐digital converter, and a global navigation satellite system receiver for accurate time synchronisation. The AE coordinates and the speed of propagating waves are determined by using a localisation algorithm relying on time of arrival measurements. A peak amplitude detection system is implemented to process the AE data recorded by the wireless sensor network. The AE time features are locally extracted by the individual wireless modules and transferred to a remote processing unit for the execution of the localisation algorithm. Experimental results revealed that AE sources generated by low‐velocity impacts are identified with a high level of accuracy. The successful implementation of the proposed wireless sensor network demonstrates its suitability for continuous and autonomous structural health monitoring aerospace applications.

Ultrasonic Guided-Waves Sensors and Integrated Structural Health Monitoring Systems for Impact Detection and Localization: A Review

“…Another important design issue that is tackled in the paper is the temporal synchronization of data from an impact event that was detected by the WSN; this topic will be expanded in Section 5.2 . The design of a WSN with low power budget obtained by the sleep mode operability is presented by Giannì et al [ 135 ]; in particular, the authors analyze the design issues regarding the AFE + ADC noise characteristics and their influence on the errors achievable for impact positioning with a triangulation method.…”

Development of a low‐power wireless acoustic emission sensor node for aerospace applications

“…The aircraft industry aims to have a time synchronisation accuracy of 20 μs over a large SHM network; 2 this is too low for accurate TOA localisation. Giannì et al 34 created a low‐power single sensor Node with GPS time synchronisation, which monitored AE to locate impact on aerospace components. The system maintains a sleep mode, which at 80 mW is high, due to GPS requires locking to the timing signals.…”

Acoustic Emission

“…To detect impact during manufacture, wireless systems have been utilised, as the associated problems with battery life are less vital. Giannì et al (2020) developed a low power system, capable of accurately determining the time of arrival of an impact wave at a piezoelectric sensor. The distributed array of sensor nodes were time correlated via GPS, and source localization performed at a central hub.…”