Large Scale Network-Centric Distributed Systems

7

Challenges in the Use of Wireless Sensor Networks for Monitoring the Health of Civil Structures

Flávia C. Delicato, Igor L. dos Santos, Luci Pirmez, Paulo F. Pires, and Claudio M. de Farias

Contents

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Structural Health Monitoring

7.2.1 The Concept of Structural Health Monitoring

7.2.2 Requirements of Modal-Based Techniques in SHM Solutions

7.2.3 The Generations of Sensor Networks for SHM

7.3 Wireless Sensor Networks

7.4 Applying Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring

7.4.1 The Second Generation of Sensor Networks for SHM

7.4.2 The Third Generation of Sensor Networks for SHM

7.4.3 A Fully Decentralized, Network-Centric Approach: Sensor-SHM

7.5 Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

7.1 Introduction

Recent advances in wireless technologies and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have enabled the emergence of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). WSNs represent a new domain of distributed computing that has attracted great research interest. A WSN is composed of a large number of tiny battery-powered devices equipped with one or more sensing units and a processor, memory, and wireless radio. Such devices, named sensor nodes, smart sensors, or motes, have limited capabilities due to their size and energy constraints. Thus, energy consumption is an important issue in the design of protocols and algorithms for wireless sensor networks. Several protocols for WSNs are designed in an energy efficient way, thus reducing power consumption and maximizing ...