Piezo-based wireless sensor networks for civil structural health monitoring

Impact detection and health monitoring are very important issues for civil structures. Sensor networks are widely used in structural health monitoring systems to identify early-age damages to the structure. A wireless sensor network is designed, implemented and deployed on a two-story concrete frame. The active sensing property of piezomaterial is utilized to detect damages in the structure. A power efficient embedded system is designed to form the wireless sensor network. A detailed description of the design of the hardware system and software system of the wireless sensor network is presented in this paper. The piezo wireless sensor network is unique compared to other wireless sensor networks as it requires relatively high sampling rate and computation for frequency analysis. Furthermore, the battery based wireless system requires power efficient hardware and software design. The system presented in this paper achieves the desired system performance while maintaining low power consumption by performing offline data processing and minimizing wireless communication. © 2009 Faculty of Construction and Land Use, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.