Wireless smart sensors for monitoring the health condition of civil infrastructure

A wireless smart sensor (WSS) has an embedded processor which is employed for signal processing, communication, and integration capabilities. A state-of-the-art review of recent articles on the WSS technologies employed in structural health monitoring (SHM) is presented in this paper. Different types of WSS and communication technologies are reviewed and their advantages and disadvantages are pointed out. WSS networks provide a number of advantages for SHM such as robust data management, higher flexibility, low cost, and high potential for providing data for better understanding of structural response and behavior. Hybrid platforms, fusing different technological platforms, appear to be promising schemes as the strengths of each technology are exploited. Next generation WSS must consume less power, integrate more with new sensors, have improved noise immunity, and be capable of working with a huge quantity of data without losses produced by wireless communication. Power harvesting based on wind, solar, and structural vibration energy needs to be explored further for long-term. Truly smart sensors should have inherent pattern recognition and machine learning capabilities. Authors advance the research ideology of integrating the sensor technology with recent advances in machine learning technologies.