A Reconfigurable Wireless Sensor Network for Structural Health Monitoring

The paper presents a reconfigurable wireless sensor network for structural health monitoring. Real-time and periodic structural health monitoring can reduce the probability of collapse and the consequences of potential life-threatening conditions. The monitoring system is composed of two parts: the wireless network in which the sensor nodes are equipped with a 3axis accelerometer and a temperature and humidity sensor, and a Matlab program that processes and visualizes the data in real-time. The first records acceleration signals in different locations of the monitored infrastructure and conveys them at the sink node. The latter plots the collected signals and computes their frequency spectrum in real-time. The wireless sensor node and the implemented network architecture were tested on a bridge structure built to scale. The results show that the sensor nodes provide data that, if processed in the frequency domain, allow the correct identification of the vibrations frequencies of the structure.