Monitoring civil structures with a wireless sensor network

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an active area of research devoted to systems that can autonomously and proactively assess the structural integrity of bridges, buildings, and aerospace vehicles. Recent technological advances promise the eventual ability to cover a large civil structure with low-cost wireless sensors that can continuously monitor a building´s structural health, but researchers face several obstacles to reaching this goal, including high data-rate, data-fidelity, and time-synchronization requirements. This article describes two systems the authors recently deployed in real-world structures.