Multimetric Event-driven System for Long-Term Wireless Sensor Operation in SHM Application

TL;DR

This paper introduces an ultra-low-power, event-driven wireless sensor system for long-term structural health monitoring, capable of detecting random events like earthquakes with reconfigurable thresholds to enhance infrastructure safety.

Contribution

It presents a novel event-based sensing system using an ultra-low-power microcontroller that can be integrated with existing platforms for efficient long-term SHM.

Findings

Achieved low power consumption of 7.43 mA active and 0.85 mA inactive modes.

Enabled reconfigurable event detection for vibration, strain, and timing.

Validated system integration with commercial wireless platforms.

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are promising solutions for large infrastructure monitoring because of their ease of installation, computing and communication capability, and cost-effectiveness. Long-term structural health monitoring (SHM), however, is still a challenge because it requires continuous data acquisition for the detection of random events such as earthquakes and structural collapse. To achieve long-term operation, it is necessary to reduce the power consumption of sensor nodes designed to capture random events and, thus, enhance structural safety. In this paper, we present an event-based sensing system design based on an ultra-low-power microcontroller with a programmable event-detection mechanism to allow continuous monitoring; the device is triggered by vibration, strain, or a timer and has a programmed threshold, resulting in ultra-low-power consumption of the sensor node. Furthermore, the proposed system can be easily reconfigured to any existing wireless sensor platform to enable ultra-low power operation. For validation, the proposed system was integrated with a commercial wireless platform to allow strain, acceleration, and time-based triggering with programmed thresholds and current consumptions of 7.43 and 0.85 mA in active and inactive modes, respectively.