A low-noise, real-time, wireless data acquisition system for structural monitoring applications

Structural health monitoring systems are conceived to automatically monitor the structural health state in real-time. The high-cost and the labor intensive installation of wired monitoring system suggest that structural monitoring systems be realized of a wireless nature. This study explores the development of a general and high-performance wireless data acquisition system (WDAQS) specifically designed for sensors commonly adopted in structural health monitoring applications. When compared with wired sensor technology, wireless sensor technology suffers limited energy supply, long data collection delay, big noise floor, and data loss. Addressing these issues, in the design of the WDAQS, several features are pursued, including flexible sensor interfaces, high power efficiency, low-noise data acquisition, and real-time and lossless data transmissions. The design of the system is presented in detail in terms of hardware, firmware, and software. Several experiments are carried out to validate and evaluate the system. The results show that the WDAQS is able to acquire high-quality data.