Proceedings Article | 17 May 2005
KEYWORDS: Sensors, Sensor networks, Telecommunications, Data communications, Wireless communications, Structural health monitoring, Databases, Data acquisition, Prototyping, Computing systems
Health Monitoring is very important for large structures like suspension- and cable-stayed bridges, offshore platforms, tall buildings and so on. Due to recent developments in new sensor systems, wireless communication systems, Internet-based data sharing and monitoring, advanced technologies for structure health monitoring (SHM) have been caused much more attentions, in which the wireless sensor network is recently received special interests. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of large populations of wirelessly connected nodes, capable of computation, communication, and sensing. In this paper, a wireless sensor networks based health monitoring system for tall buildings has been explored integrated with wireless sensing communication, computation, data management and data remote access via Internet.
Firstly, a laboratory prototype was designed and developed to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed system. Wireless sensor nodes were deployed on a test structure, the data being sensed by the sensor nodes in the network is eventually transmitted to a base station, where the information can be accessed. Through a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN, IEEE802.11b), the simulated data was transferred among personal computers and wireless sensor nodes peripherals without cables. And then, a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) includes eight sensor nodes and one base station was installed on Di Wang Tower to verify the performance of the present system in-depth. Finally, comparisons between WSN and cable-based monitoring analytical acceleration responses of field measurement have been performed. The proposed system is shown to be effective for structural health monitoring.
