Title: Adapting Performance in Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring Applications

SHiMmer, an active-sensing platform, combines wireless communication with solar energy harvesting to provide long-lasting structural health monitoring (SHM). While reducing the need for post-deployment physical human interaction, the platform must adapt performance to accommodate the energy availability. For example, on sunny days, SHiMmer can perform highly accurate tasks requiring more extensive computation and communication, but on cloudy days, it must reduce performance due to a decrease in harvested energy. This paper presents a system controller for SHiMmer that adapts performance based on energy availability for steady and external trigger state conditions. For steady state operation, the controller adapts the execution rate to achieve high performance while maintaining sufficient energy. For external trigger state operation, the controller determines the execution time, energy consumption and performance of a request from an external device. Using the local damage identification paradigm, the methods are tested using data from SHiMmer, showing the controller’s ability to adapt at runtime and maintain sufficient energy. Steady state results show how the execution rate changes with weather conditions, while external trigger state results highlight how processing significantly affects SHiMmer’s efficiency.