This paper presents a wireless sensor network node designed for building a structural
health monitoring (SHM) application. To develop a low-cost, low-power, dedicated wireless
sensor node for a composite SHM system, a modular approach is taken in the design of the
wireless sensor node. Three functional modules are adopted, including a sensor input unit,
processing core and wireless communication. Different from existing wireless sensor nodes,
the signal conditioning circuit is designed on this developed node for two typical SHM
sensors, the piezoelectric sensor and the strain gauge. The developed wireless sensor
nodes can be expediently used to deploy the dedicated wireless sensor network for
SHM application. A two-tier wireless sensor network is deployed adopting the
designed wireless sensor nodes to verify the efficacy of developing SHM systems. An
embedding pattern matching method and a directed diffusion routing algorithm are
developed to monitor the strain distribution or the bolt loosening position successfully.