Distributed Model Updating in Smart Wireless Monitoring Systems

A wireless sensor integrates a radio to facilitate the exchange of data by wireless communications. In recent years, wireless sensors have rapidly matured with current platforms offering performance levels on par with traditional tethered sensors. The elimination of extensive wiring typical of tethered monitoring systems keeps the cost of wireless monitoring systems low. In addition to the inclusion of a radio, most wireless sensors include low-power microcontrollers in their hardware design. The inclusion of computational resources allows the sensor to autonomously process data, a revolutionary concept not previously seen in tethered structural monitoring systems. In this paper, the distributed computing resources inherent to a wireless structural monitoring system are leveraged to conduct model updating. A parallelized version of simulated annealing model updating procedures is embedded in a network of wireless sensors for autonomous execution. Automated model updating by a wireless monitoring system allows the system to keep analytical models current for long-term health monitoring of the structure.