Source: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford,

CA, USA, September 12-14, 2005.

Validation of an Integrated Network System for Real-Time

Wireless Monitoring of Civil Structures
Yang Wang, Jerome P. Lynch, Kincho H. Law

ABSTRACT1

Wireless structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are becoming a

convenient and preferred monitoring technology due in part to the elimination of the
installation time and costs often associated with traditional tethered systems.
However, many challenges associated with developing wireless SHM systems
remain. These technical challenges include restricted power consumption, data
fidelity during wireless communication, long communication ranges suitable for
civil structures, real-time data acquisition from multiple sensing units under limited
communication bandwidth, and difficulty in time synchronization.
This paper presents a new integrated real-time wireless SHM system that
addresses some of the technical issues described. The proposed system supports
real-time data acquisition from multiple wireless sensing units, which can
simultaneously collect and analyze data from a heterogeneous set of analog sensors.
Low-cost signal conditioning circuits are incorporated to improve the quality of
sensor signals. Each wireless sensing unit employs a specially selected wireless
transceiver that consumes relatively low power and supports long-distance peer-to-
peer communication. An online service platform is developed to allow remote
access and graphical display of sensor data in near real-time. The feasibility and
reliability of this integrated wireless SHM network system are corroborated by
extensive laboratory and field tests.

INTRODUCTION

As a fast-growing research topic, structural health monitoring (SHM) has shown

high potential in ensuring the performance and the safety of civil structures [1-2].
In SHM systems, modern sensing technologies are employed to provide accurate
measurement of structural responses due to various excitations. These

Yang Wang, and Kincho H. Law, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Jerome P. Lynch, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
measurement results can then be screened by certain damage identification
algorithms in order to diagnose damage in the structure.
The data acquisition (DAQ) infrastructure is a fundamental component of any
SHM system that collects structural sensor signals. Traditional DAQ modules are
wire-based, connecting the sensors with a central data server by running wires
throughout the structure. These wire-based DAQ modules usually suffer from
installations defined by high costs and long setup times. Typically, a 12-channel
wire-based system may cost about $50,000 in the U.S., with half of the expense
associated with its installation [3]. Moreover, the installation of wired systems can
consume up to 75% of the total testing time for large structures [4].
Recent developments in wireless technologies introduce exciting opportunities
in replacing wire-based DAQ modules with wireless units. In wireless SHM
systems, wireless communication is used to replace traditional cable communication;
therefore, cable installation can be eliminated or minimized. It has been illustrated
by Straser et al. that wireless SHM systems have great advantages in saving time
and cost over cable installations [4]. Lynch et al. further demonstrate that many
proposed damage identification algorithms can be embedded into units of the
wireless sensing network, thereby substantially reducing power-consuming wireless
communication, and improving the scalability of the system [5]. Kottapalli et al.
propose a two-tiered wireless sensor network topology that addresses power
consumption, data rate, and communication range limitations of current wireless
SHM systems [6]. Other research efforts have also been proposed in developing
various wireless SHM systems [7-9], and a survey of current development of
wireless SHM systems is given by Lynch et al. [10].
Along with the advantages of wireless SHM systems, there also remain some
challenges in applying wireless sensing technologies into SHM systems. One major
challenge with the hardware design of a wireless sensing unit is the need to
optimize power consumption since most wireless sensing units depend on limited
battery power. Because of the reduced reliability of wireless communications,
robust communication protocols are important to ensure proper information flow in
the wireless sensor network. Communication reliability and limited wireless data
transfer rates also pose difficulties in realizing real-time and continuous wireless
data acquisition.
In previous research, a prototype wireless SHM system has been proposed to
address the above problems [11-13]. This paper reports further extension,
improvement, and validation of the prototype system. The paper starts with an
overview and key performance summary of the current system. Newly incorporated
is an online graphical data accessing platform that allows real-time Internet access
to the wireless sensor data. Field validation results at the Geumdang Bridge in
Icheon, South Korea are then introduced [14]. Towards solving some signal noise
problems that were encountered using MEMS accelerometers, a special signal
conditioning Printed Circuit Board (PCB) has been designed and fabricated.
Validation tests to this signal conditioning circuit board are also presented.
OVERVIEW OF THE PROTOTYPE WIRELESS SHM SYSTEM

Advances in information and communication technologies have greatly

facilitated the improvement of SHM systems. The prototype wireless SHM system
is designed to provide accurate data acquisition and integrated online services for a
wireless sensor network. An overview of the prototype system is illustrated in
Figure 1. Each wireless sensing unit can accommodate four analog sensors
measuring structural responses. If desired, the sensor data can easily be processed
on-board in the wireless sensing unit [5]. A data server is used to organize and
collect data from multiple wireless sensing units in the sensor network. The data
server also provides Internet connectivity so that sensor data or desired engineering
analysis results can be viewed remotely from other computers over the Internet. As
discussed in later sections, a signal conditioning circuit is added to filter, amplify
and offset the signals from the analog sensors.
The design of the prototype system has been oriented for a large-scale and low-
power wireless SHM application in civil structures. Some of the main features of
this wireless SHM system are: i) low power consumption while achieving long
communication ranges with robust communication protocols for reliable data
acquisition, ii) accurate synchronized wireless data collection from multiple analog
sensors at a reasonable sampling rate suitable for civil structural applications, iii)
considerable local data processing capability at the wireless sensing units to reduce
energy consumption and to enhance system scalability, and iv) accommodation of
peer-to-peer communication among wireless sensing units for collaborative
decentralized data analysis. Key performance characteristics of the wireless sensing
units are summarized in Table 1.

Structural Structural
......
Sensors Sensors

Signal Signal
......
Conditioning Conditioning

Wireless Wireless ......

Sensing Unit Sensing Unit

Wireless Sensor
Network Server

Internet

Online Online
Graphical Graphical ......
Access to Access to
Sensor Data Sensor Data

Figure 1. An overview of the prototype wireless SHM system

 Table 1. Key characteristics of the wireless sensing unit
Power Consumption 77mA when active, 100mA when standby (at 5V DC)
Device Size 4.0” x 2.6” x 1.6” (10.2 cm x 6.5 cm x 4.0 cm)
Micro-controller Atmel ATmega128, 8-bit, 128kB Flash Memory
External SRAM Cypress CY62128B, 128kB
A/D Converter Texas Instrument ADS8341, 4-Channel, 16-bit
Range Up to 300’ (90m) indoor, 1000’ (300m) outdoor
Wireless
Transfer Rate 38.4 kbps
Communication
Frequency 902-928 MHz
With
MaxStream 7 channels at Frequency Hopping Spreading
Channel Mode
9XCite Spectrum mode
Network Peer-to-peer, broadcast

FIELD VALIDATION TESTS AT GEUMDANG BRIDGE

Field validation tests of the prototype wireless SHM system were conducted at
Geumdang Bridge in Icheon, South Korea [14]. The Geumdang Bridge, a long-
span concrete box girder bridge spanning 122m, is instrumented with two sets of
accelerometers attached to both a wired and a wireless monitoring system (Figure
2(a)). Both systems employ accelerometers to measure the vertical acceleration
response of the bridge at the 14 solid-dot locations denoted in Figure 2a. The
central server (a laptop) of the wireless SHM system is placed at the vicinity of
sensor location #9, with a maximum distance of about 60m between the central
server and the farthest wireless sensing unit. The piezoelectric accelerometers used
by the wire-based monitoring system are PCB393 accelerometers manufactured by
PCB Piezotronics. For direct comparison, the wireless monitoring system deploys
lower-cost capacitive Piezotronics PCB3801 accelerometers at these locations, with
one PCB3801 accelerometer installed side-by-side to each PCB393 accelerometer.
PCB393 accelerometers used by the wire-based system have higher sensitivity and
lower noise floors; therefore, they are expected to provide better performance than
the PCB3801 accelerometers used by the wireless system.
For the wire-based monitoring system, the analog outputs of the PCB393
accelerometers are fed into a 16-channel PCB Piezotronics 481A03 signal
conditioning unit. Before being sampled and digitized, the signals are amplified by
a factor of 10 using an amplification circuit native to the signal conditioning unit.
The wire-based monitoring system is configured to sample the 14 sensor channels at
200Hz. For the wireless monitoring system, the PCB3801 accelerometers are
connected directly to the sensing interface of each wireless sensing unit without
signal conditioning (the signal conditioning circuit mentioned in the last section was
not yet available during the field tests). Due to the limited wireless communication
bandwidth and the large number of wireless sensing units that are streaming data
simultaneously, the sampling rate of the wireless monitoring system is selected at
70Hz. Over the course of two full days of testing, the designed communication
protocol for near-synchronized and continuous real-time data acquisition proves to
be highly reliable for the wireless sensor deployment on the bridge structure.
 The Geumdang Bridge is kept closed to regular highway traffic while the bridge
is excited using trucks of known weight and speed crossing the bridge. Figure 2(b)
illustrates the acceleration response of the bridge at sensor location #8 when a 40-
ton truck crosses the bridge at 60 km/hr. The figure plots the acceleration time
histories collected by the two different systems. There exists a strong one-to-one
correspondence in the acceleration response records collected by the two systems.
As expected, the acceleration record measured by the wireless monitoring system
appears noisier than that collected by the wire-based monitoring system, due to the
difference in the accelerometers being used and the signal conditioning in the wired
system. The wireless sensing units also perform a 4096-point FFT of the measured
acceleration response. The frequency response, as calculated by the wireless
sensing unit, is shown in Figure 2(c). If the frequency response is compared to the
frequency response calculated off-line using the response data collected by the
wire-based monitoring system, the primary response frequency of the bridge can be
identified to be 3.6 Hz in both plots. Furthermore, the FFT results from the two
systems are very close to each other. The difference in the amplitude of FFT results
is mainly caused by the different sampling frequencies used in the two systems.

A
38 m 46 m 38 m
5.6 m 5.6 m 5.6 m 5.6 m 5.6 m
15 o

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 17 19 26 25 24 15 23 22 21 20 18 16
Pier 4 Pier 5 Pier 6
Accelerometer
Location A

(a) Plan view showing wired and wireless accelerometers placed for 14 locations

Wire-based DAQ, Sensor #8 FFT - Wire-based DAQ, Sensor #8

0.04 4
Acceleration (g)

0.02
Magnitude

0 2
-0.02
Frequency (Hz)
Time(s)
-0.04 0
155 160 165 170 175 180 185 190 0 5 10 15
Wireless DAQ, Sensor #8 FFT - Wireless DAQ, Sensor #8
0.04 0.8
Acceleration (g)

Magnitude

0.02 0.6
0 0.4
Frequency (Hz)
-0.02 0.2
Time(s)
-0.04 0
155 160 165 170 175 180 185 190 0 5 10 15

(b) Acceleration data at sensor #8 (c) FFT results at sensor #8

Figure 2. Field validation tests at Geumdang Bridge in Icheon, South Korea

SIGNAL CONDITIONING CIRCUIT DESIGN AND VALIDATION

As shown in the last section, the original sensor signals from the structural
response can be weak and noisy. Before feeding these sensor signals into the
Analog-to-Digital (A/D) converter of a wireless sensing unit, certain signal
conditioning circuits could be used to improve the signal quality. In order to make
the prototype wireless SHM system adaptable for noisy sensor signals typical of
MEMS accelerometers, a signal conditioning printed circuit board (PCB) has been
designed and fabricated. The three major functions of this circuit board are:
offsetting, filtering, and amplification.
The reason for offsetting the circuit signal is that the A/D converter of the
wireless sensing units takes 0 to 5V input sensor signal. However, this is not
always the case for the available sensor signals. For example, some accelerometer
signals are 0V when there is no vibration, i.e. the accelerometer signal is fluctuating
around 0V when there is vibration. Therefore it is necessary to offset the sensor
signal so that the fluctuating signal is within 0 to 5V. In the circuit that has been
designed, the conditioned signal is designed to fluctuate around 2.5V, within 0 to
5V. The filtering circuit includes one high-pass filter and one low-pass filter. The
high-pass filter is an RC filter with a cut-off frequency of 0.02Hz, and the low-pass
filter is a 4-th order Bessel filter with a cut-off frequency of 25Hz. Bessel filter is
selected for its property of linear-phase shift in the pass-band frequency range. This
linear-phase shift property corresponds to constant time delay for signals in the
pass-band, which conserves the waveform in the time domain. The overall
amplification of the circuit can be selected by sizing a certain resistor in the circuit.
The final PCB circuit board incorporates a 3-position switch, so that three options
are provided for the amplification factor (4.9x, 9.5x and 18.5x).
In a validation test of the signal conditioning PCB board, two accelerometers
are aligned side-by-side, both measuring the top floor vibration of a 3-story
aluminum frame structure located in the laboratory. Signal output from one
accelerometer is fed into the A/D converter of a wireless sensing unit directly while
-3
x 10
4 0.15

0.1
2
0.05
Acceleration(g)

Acceleration(g)

0
0

-0.05
-2

-0.1
-4
With S.C. -0.15 With S.C.
Without S.C. Time(s) Without S.C. Time(s)
-6 -0.2
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5

(a) Low vibration amplitude (b) High vibration amplitude

Figure 3. Wireless accelerometer data with and without signal conditioning

the signal from the other accelerometer is fed into the signal conditioning circuit
before being sampled by the A/D converter of another wireless sensing unit. For a
simple free vibration test, an external force is applied to the top floor of the
structure for initial displacement and released. Figure 3(a) presents the sensor data
when the vibration amplitude is low, in which case the Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR)
is low. It can be observed that the sensor data with signal conditioning is smoother
than the data without signal conditioning. Figure 3(b) presents the sensor data when
the vibration amplitude is higher. When the SNR is high, the difference between
the data collected with and without signal conditioning is almost negligible
compared with the signal amplitude.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

This paper presents the design of an integrated software and hardware

architecture for a wireless structural health monitoring system. The system supports
reliable real-time data collection from wireless sensors with long-range
communication in civil structures. An online graphical sensor data access platform
has been developed. The implemented prototype system also includes a low-cost
signal conditioning PCB board. Both laboratory and field validation tests
corroborate the capability and reliability of the prototype system for large-scale
deployment in civil structures.
The prototype system can further be improved in a number of areas. With the
rapid development in wireless communication technologies, wireless transceivers
that support longer communication ranges and higher data rates while consuming
less power should be pursued. Improvements can also be made with respect to the
embedded software. For example, more advanced communication protocols are
needed to organize very-large-scale wireless sensor networks with peer-to-peer
connections. Last but not least, additional tests in laboratory and field environment
are needed to validate the system, to discover deficiency, and to further refine the
design.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

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 the access to the Geumdang Bridge. The authors would
like to thank Prof. Ed Carryer, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford
University, for his valuable advice on the PCB layout design.
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