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Abstract
Structural health monitoring (SHM) has become an important research problem which has the potential to monitor and ensure the performance and safety of civil structures. Traditional wire-based SHM systems require significant time and cost for cable installation. With the recent advances in wireless communication technology, wireless SHM systems have emerged as a promising alternative solution for rapid, accurate and low-cost structural monitoring. This paper presents a newly designed integrated wireless monitoring system that supports real-time data acquisition from multiple wireless sensing units. The selected wireless transceiver consumes relatively low power and supports long-distance peer-to-peer communication. In addition to hardware, embedded multithreaded software is also designed as an integral component of the proposed wireless monitoring system. A direct result of the multithreaded software paradigm is a wireless sensing unit capable of simultaneous data collection, data interrogation and wireless transmission. A reliable data communication protocol is designed and implemented, enabling robust real-time and near-synchronized data acquisition from multiple wireless sensing units. An integrated prototype system has been fabricated, assembled, and validated in both laboratory tests and in a large-scale field test conducted upon the Geumdang Bridge in Icheon, South Korea.
Acknowledgements
This research is partially funded by the National Science Foundation under grants CMS-9988909 (Stanford University) and CMS-0421180 (University of Michigan). The first author is supported by an Office of Technology Licensing Stanford Graduate Fellowship. Additional support was provided by the Rackham Grant and Fellowship Program at the University of Michigan. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Professors Chung Bang Yun and Jin Hak Yi, as well as Mr Chang Geun Lee, from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) for access to Geumdang Bridge. During this study, the authors have received valuable advice on the printed circuit board layout from Professor Ed Carryer of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University. The authors appreciate the generous assistance from the individuals acknowledged above.