Citation: Tronci, E.M.; Nagabuko, S.;
Hieda, H.; Feng, M.Q. Long-Range
Low-Power Multi-Hop Wireless
Sensor Network for Monitoring the
Vibration Response of Long-Span
Bridges. Sensors 2022, 22, 3916.
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22103916
Academic Editors: Alvaro Araujo
Pinto and Hacene Fouchal
Received: 1 April 2022
Accepted: 19 May 2022
Published: 22 May 2022
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Article
Long-Range Low-Power Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Network
for Monitoring the Vibration Response of Long-Span Bridges
†
Eleonora Maria Tronci
1,
* , Sakie Nagabuko
2
, Hiroyuki Hieda
3
and Maria Qing Feng
1
1
Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University,
New York, NY 10027, USA; mqf2101@columbia.edu
2
Toshiba, Corporate Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corporation, Tokyo 105-0023, Japan;
sakie1.nagakubo@toshiba.co.jp
3
Toshiba America Inc., New York, NY 10020, USA; hiroyuki.hieda@toshiba.com
* Correspondence: et2501@columbia.edu
†
This paper is an extension version of the conference paper: Tronci, E.M.; Nagabuko, S.; Hieda, H.; Feng, M.Q.
Low-power multi-hop wireless sensor network for vibration monitoring of large structures. In Sensors and
Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems, Proceedings of the SPIE Smart Structures
and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation, Long Beach, CA, USA, 6–10 March 2022, 1204711.
Abstract:
Recently, vibration-based monitoring technologies have become extremely popular, pro-
viding effective tools to assess the health condition and evaluate the structural integrity of civil
structures and infrastructures in real-time. In this context, battery-operated wireless sensors allow
us to stop using wired sensor networks, providing easy installation processes and low maintenance
costs. Nevertheless, wireless transmission of high-rate data such as structural vibration consumes
considerable power. Consequently, these wireless networks demand frequent battery replacement,
which is problematic for large structures with poor accessibility, such as long-span bridges. This
work proposes a low-power multi-hop wireless sensor network suitable for monitoring large-sized
civil infrastructures to handle this problem. The proposed network employs low-power wireless
devices that act in the sub-GHz band, permitting long-distance data transmission and communication
surpassing 1 km. Data collection over vast areas is accomplished via multi-hop communication, in
which the sensor data are acquired and re-transmitted by neighboring sensors. The communication
and transmission times are synchronized, and time-division communication is executed, which
depends on the wireless devices to sleep when the connection is not necessary to consume less power.
An experimental field test is performed to evaluate the reliability and accuracy of the designed
wireless sensor network to collect and capture the acceleration response of the long-span Manhattan
Bridge. Thanks to the high-quality monitoring data collected with the developed low-power wireless
sensor network, the natural frequencies and mode shapes were robustly recognized. The monitoring
tests also showed the benefits of the presented wireless sensor system concerning the installation and
measuring operations.
Keywords:
long-range monitoring; low-power wireless; multi-hop network; accelerometers;
long-span bridge; structural vibration monitoring; operational modal analysis; manhattan bridge
1. Introduction
The ability to robustly and reliably track the health conditions of structural systems
over time has become a fundamental aspect of the development of resilient and safe
urban communities and infrastructural systems. Consequently, in recent years, numerous
methods have been developed for monitoring the structural health of bridges, buildings,
and other civil engineering structures, many of which rely on the analysis of measured
structural vibration response [
1
]. In particular, vibration-based monitoring strategies
relying on parametric or non-parametric system identification techniques are among the
most popular ones, as it emerges from the rich amount of publications in the research
Sensors 2022, 22, 3916. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22103916 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
