Symbolic and graphical representation scheme for sensors deployed in large-scale structures

Abstract

As wireless sensor network (WSN)-based structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are increasingly being employed in civil infrastructures and building structures, the management of large numbers of sensing devices and the large amount of data acquired from WSNs will become increasingly difficult unless systematic expressions of the sensor network are provided. This study introduces a practical WSN for SHM that consists of sensors, wireless sensor nodes, repeater nodes, master nodes, and monitoring servers. This study also proposes a symbolic and graphical representation scheme (SGRS) for this system, in which the communication relationships and respective location information of the distributed sensing components are expressed in a concise manner. The SGRS was applied to the proposed WSN, which is employed in an actual large-scale irregular structure in which three types of sensors (75 vibrating wire strain gauges, 10 inclinometers, and three laser displacement sensors) and customized wireless sensor nodes are installed. The application results demonstrate that prompt identification of sensing units and effective management of the distributed sensor network can be realized from the SGRS. The results also demonstrate the superiority of the SGRS over conventional expression methods in which a box diagram or tree diagram representing the ID of sensors and data loggers is used. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.