DEVELOPMENT OF WIRELESS SENSORS FOR RAPID DEPLOYMENT IN CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES

Abstract

Buildings and civil infrastructures are frequently subjected to natural hazards such as earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes and fires. Therefore, developing an efficient and robust monitoring system has become a most significant research area. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a novel and attractive technology and has been an energetic research area in recent years. Furthermore, wireless sensor networks have developed several applications mainly to monitor hazardous environments. The bolt is ubiquitous in our life environment, such as buildings, bridges, railways and pipelines. Therefore, the new inspiration for developing a wireless sensor device, which is named "smart bolt", is proposed in this paper, which is to develop a wireless sensor device for rapid deploying. The prototype device is capable of wireless sensing via embedding the wireless sensor into a bolt, consisting of sensing and wireless communication modules. This paper introduces wireless technology and applications; moreover, it presents the prototype device design that includes hardware design and sensor integration. Experimental study was designed to investigate the benefit and efficiency of the proposed prototype and is finally shown in the paper to confirm the feasibility of a wireless sensor network in buildings and civil infrastructure.