Miniature Low power Multi-parameter Wireless Sensor Network for Infrastructure

Infrastructure and equipment health monitoring are becoming increasingly important. There is a need to provide a cost effective means to not only inspect a significant number of structures but to also prioritize situations where immediate maintenance actions will result in a major reduction in renewal and repair costs over the lifetime of the structure. That would require the use of sensors for monitoring structural integrity in combination with environmental severity. To reduce manual inspection costs, the system should provide the ability to remotely access data and provide a clear actionable output. We propose to develop a multi-parameter wireless smart sensor network for infrastructures. It includes distributed wireless sensor nodes for monitoring and mapping environmental load that communicate with central gateway nodes. The environmental load wireless sensor node is a miniature low power sensor node that includes a suite of sensors and communicates through IEEE 1451 protocols to the gateway node. The sensor gateway node collects the sensor node data and performs the diagnosis on the structure condition. The gateway node will send the information to a nearby crossing vehicle or maintenance staff wirelessly, or to a remote office for further analysis.