Long-term monitoring of cable stays with a wireless sensor network

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a promising technology that could induce a significant innovation in the field of structural monitoring. The main advantages of WSNs are fast deployment, little interference and self-organisation. However, since WSN are battery powered, the power management of the sensor nodes significantly influences the operation method and the overall data management process. Since data communication is the most energy-consuming task, a significant data reduction has to be attained in the sensor nodes to achieve system lifetimes that are useful for real life applications. This paper discusses several basic aspects of data processing and data management for long-term monitoring with WSNs. It presents a specific monitoring system and illustrates a long-term field test performed with this system on a bridge. The test results demonstrate that in-network data reduction is a very promising but challenging approach, since it has to be implemented with very limited computational and memory resources.

Keywords:

• wireless sensor networks
• monitoring
• cable-stay bridge
• energy management
• data reduction

Acknowledgements

Part of this work was performed within the Project ‘Sustainable Bridges: Assessment for Future Traffic Demands and Longer Lives’ of the 6th Framework Program of the European Commission. The authors acknowledge the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research for its financial support.