Wireless Monitoring Techniques for Structural Health Monitoring

Recently, a variety of wireless structural health monitoring systems have been demonstrated as viable substitutes for traditional high-cost tethered monitoring systems. In this study, a prototype wireless sensing system is deployed on the Voigt Bridge (La Jolla, CA) and a historical theatre (Detroit, MI) to validate its performance against cabled monitoring systems. Acceleration time history records collected from wireless sensors during ambient and forced vibrations suggest excellent correlation with those obtained from tethered systems. Furthermore, the embedded data processing capabilities of wireless sensors are highlighted; operational deflection shapes of the bridge deck and theatre balcony are identified autonomously by the wireless sensor network using embedded algorithms. Keywords-embedded data processing, Fourier analysis, frequency domain decomposition, mode shapes, peak-picking, sensor networks, structural health monitoring, wireless sensors