The development and performance study of a two-level wireless sensor network for structural health monitoring
Abstract
This paper presents the development and performance study of a two-level wireless sensor network (WSN) for structural health monitoring (SHM). The lower-level network adopts low-power ZigBee protocol whereas the higher-level network employs high speed WiFi communication for long distance data transmission. To promote distributed data processing and damage diagnosis, the higher-level sensor nodes are designed to possess high computational capabilities. A reliable data transmission mechanism is implemented in the lower-level ZigBee network. To reduce the power consumption and quickly respond to extreme events, an event-driven monitoring approach is proposed. The impact of the coexistence of ZigBee and WiFi on the system's performance is also studied. © 2009 by ASME.