School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2018 Jan 17;18(1):262. doi: 10.3390/s18010262.
Structural health monitoring (SHM) is playing an increasingly important role in ensuring the safety of structures. A shift of SHM research away from traditional wired methods toward the use of wireless smart sensors (WSS) has been motivated by the attractive features of wireless smart sensor networks (WSSN). The progress achieved in Micro Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technologies and wireless data transmission, has extended the effectiveness and range of applicability of WSSNs. One of the most common sensors employed in SHM strategies is the accelerometer; however, most accelerometers in WSS nodes have inadequate resolution for measurement of the typical accelerations found in many SHM applications. In this study, a high-resolution and low-noise tri-axial digital MEMS accelerometer is incorporated in a next-generation WSS platform, the Xnode. In addition to meeting the acceleration sensing demands of large-scale civil infrastructure applications, this new WSS node provides powerful hardware and a robust software framework to enable edge computing that can deliver actionable information. Hardware and software integration challenges are presented, and the associate resolutions are discussed. The performance of the wireless accelerometer is demonstrated experimentally through comparison with high-sensitivity wired accelerometers. This new high-sensitivity wireless accelerometer will extend the use of WSSN to a broader class of SHM applications.
结构健康监测（SHM）在确保结构安全方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。由于无线智能传感器（WSS）的诱人特性，SHM 研究已经从传统的有线方法转向使用无线智能传感器。微机电系统（MEMS）技术和无线数据传输的进步扩展了 WSSN 的有效性和适用范围。在 SHM 策略中使用的最常见的传感器之一是加速度计；但是，WSS 节点中的大多数加速度计的分辨率不足以测量许多 SHM 应用中发现的典型加速度。在这项研究中，一种高分辨率、低噪声的三轴数字 MEMS 加速度计被整合到下一代 WSS 平台 Xnode 中。除了满足大规模民用基础设施应用的加速度感测需求外，这个新的 WSS 节点还提供了强大的硬件和稳健的软件框架，以实现能够提供可操作信息的边缘计算。本文提出了硬件和软件集成的挑战，并讨论了相关的解决方案。通过与高灵敏度有线加速度计的比较，实验验证了无线加速度计的性能。这种新的高灵敏度无线加速度计将把 WSSN 的应用扩展到更广泛的 SHM 应用领域。
