• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.505-524
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• 2010

Wireless structural monitoring systems consist of networks of wireless sensors installed to record the loading environment and corresponding response of large-scale civil structures. Wireless monitoring systems are desirable because they eliminate the need for costly and labor intensive installation of coaxial wiring in a structure. However, another advantageous characteristic of wireless sensors is their installation modularity. For example, wireless sensors can be easily and rapidly removed and reinstalled in new locations on a structure if the need arises. In this study, the reconfiguration of a rapid-to-deploy wireless structural monitoring system is proposed for monitoring short- and medium-span highway bridges. Narada wireless sensor nodes using power amplified radios are adopted to achieve long communication ranges. A network of twenty Narada wireless sensors is installed on the Yeondae Bridge (Korea) to measure the global response of the bridge to controlled truck loadings. To attain acceleration measurements in a large number of locations on the bridge, the wireless monitoring system is installed three times, with each installation concentrating sensors in one localized area of the bridge. Analysis of measurement data after installation of the three monitoring system configurations leads to reliable estimation of the bridge modal properties, including mode shapes.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.164-172
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• 2013

We consider the problem of secure and robust clustering for quantized target tracking in wireless sensor networks (WSN) where the observed system is assumed to evolve according to a probabilistic state space model. We propose a new method for jointly activating the best group of candidate sensors that participate in data aggregation, detecting the malicious sensors and estimating the target position. Firstly, we select the appropriate group in order to balance the energy dissipation and to provide the required data of the target in the WSN. This selection is also based on the transmission power between a sensor node and a cluster head. Secondly, we detect the malicious sensor nodes based on the information relevance of their measurements. Then, we estimate the target position using quantized variational filtering (QVF) algorithm. The selection of the candidate sensors group is based on multi-criteria function, which is computed by using the predicted target position provided by the QVF algorithm, while the malicious sensor nodes detection is based on Kullback-Leibler distance between the current target position distribution and the predicted sensor observation. The performance of the proposed method is validated by simulation results in target tracking for WSN.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.284-293
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• 2005

A critical issue in applications involving networks of wireless sensors is their ability to synchronize, and mitigate the fading propagation channel effects. Especially when distributed 'slave' sensors (nodes) reach-back to communicate with the 'master' sensor (gateway), low power cooperative schemes are well motivated. Viewing each node as an antenna element in a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) multi-antenna system, we design pilot patterns to estimate the multiple carrier frequency offsets (CFO), and the multiple channels corresponding to each node-gateway link. Our novel pilot scheme consists of non-zero pilot symbols along with zeros, which separate nodes in a time division multiple access (TDMA) fashion, and lead to low complexity schemes because CFO and channel estimators per node are decoupled. The resulting training algorithm is not only suitable for wireless sensor networks, but also for synchronization and channel estimation of single- and multi-carrier MIMO systems. We investigate the performance of our estimators analytically, and with simulations.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.846-856
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• 2016

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely applied in monitoring and control of environment parameters. It is sometimes necessary to disseminate data through wireless links after they are deployed in order to adjust configuration parameters of sensors or distribute management commands and queries to sensors. Several approaches have been proposed recently for data dissemination in WSNs. However, none of these approaches achieves both high efficiency and low complexity simultaneously. To address this problem, cluster-tree based network architecture, which divides a WSN into hierarchies and clusters is proposed. Upon this architecture, data is delivered from base station to all sensors in clusters hierarchy by hierarchy. In each cluster, father broadcasts data to all his children with instantly decodable network coding (IDNC), and a novel scheme targeting to maximize total transmission gain (MTTG) is proposed. This scheme employs a new packet scheduling algorithm to select IDNC packets, which uses weight status feedback matrix (WSFM) directly. Analysis and simulation results indicate that the transmission efficiency approximate to the best existing approach maximum weight clique, but with much lower computational overhead. Hence, the energy efficiency achieves both in data transmission and processing.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.419-427
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• 2015

There have been increases in the elderly population worldwide, and this has been accompanied by rapid growth in the health-care market, as there is an ongoing need to monitor the health of individuals. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) consist of wireless sensors attached on or inside the human body to monitor vital health-related problems, e.g., electrocardiograms (ECGs), electroencephalograms (EEGs), and electronystagmograms (ENGs). With WBANs, patients' vital signs are recorded by each sensor and sent to a coordinator. However, because of obstructions by the human body, sensors cannot always send the data to the coordinator, requiring them to transmit at higher power. Therefore, we need to consider the lifetime of the sensors given their required transmit power. In the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, the transmission topology functions as a one-hop star plus one topology. In order to obtain a high throughput, we reduce the transmit power of the sensors and maintain equity for all sensors. We propose the multiple-hop transmission for WBANs based on the IEEE 802.15.6 carrier-sense multiple-access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. We calculate the throughput and variance of the transmit power by performing simulations, and we discuss the results obtained using the proposed theorems.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.641-659
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• 2010

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) gradually becomes a technique for ensuring the health and safety of civil infrastructures and is also an important approach for the research of the damage accumulation and disaster evolving characteristics of civil infrastructures. It is attracting prodigious research interests and the active development interests of scientists and engineers because a great number of civil infrastructures are planned and built every year in mainland China. In a SHM system the sheer number of accompanying wires, fiber optic cables, and other physical transmission medium is usually prohibitive, particularly for such structures as offshore platforms and long-span structures. Fortunately, with recent advances in technologies in sensing, wireless communication, and micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), wireless sensor technique has been developing rapidly and is being used gradually in the SHM of civil engineering structures. In this paper, some recent advances in the research, development, and implementation of wireless sensors for the SHM of civil infrastructures in mainland China, especially in Dalian University of Technology (DUT) and Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), are introduced. Firstly, a kind of wireless digital acceleration sensors for structural global monitoring is designed and validated in an offshore structure model. Secondly, wireless inclination sensor systems based on Frequency-hopping techniques are developed and applied successfully to swing monitoring of large-scale hook structures. Thirdly, wireless acquisition systems integrating with different sensing materials, such as Polyvinylidene Fluoride(PVDF), strain gauge, piezoresistive stress/strain sensors fabricated by using the nickel powder-filled cement-based composite, are proposed for structural local monitoring, and validating the characteristics of the above materials. Finally, solutions to the key problem of finite energy for wireless sensors networks are discussed, with future works also being introduced, for example, the wireless sensor networks powered by corrosion signal for corrosion monitoring and rapid diagnosis for large structures.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.80-87
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• 2022

Lack of sufficient battery capacity is one of the most important challenges impeding the development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Recent innovations in the areas of wireless energy transfer and rechargeable batteries have made it possible to advance WSNs. Therefore, in this article, we propose an energy-efficient charging of sensors in a WSN scenario. First, we have formulated the problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. Then a utility function-based greedy algorithm named UGreedy/UF1 is proposed for solving the problem. Finally, the performance of UGreedy/UF1 is analyzed along with other baseline algorithms: UGreedy/UF2, 2-opt TSP, and Greedy TSP. The simulation results show that UGreedy/UF1 performs better than others both in terms of the deadline missing ratio of sensors and the total energy consumption of UAVs.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.2959-2973
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• 2021

In wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs), the network lifetime is an important criterion to measure the performance of the WSAN system. Generally, the network lifetime is mainly affected by the energy of sensors. However, the energy of sensors is limited, and the batteries of sensors cannot be replaced and charged. So, it is crucial to make energy consumption efficient. WSAN introduces multiple actuators that can be regarded as multiple collectors to gather data from their respective surrounding sensors. But how to deploy actuators to reduce the energy consumption of sensors and increase the manageability of the network is an important challenge. This research optimizes actuators deployment by a proposed probabilistic mutation multi-layer particle swarm optimization algorithm to maximize the coverage of actuators to sensors and reduce the energy consumption of sensors. Simulation results show that this method is effective for improving the coverage rate and reducing the energy consumption.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.271-298
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• 2012

Researchers have made significant progress in recent years towards realizing effective structural health monitoring (SHM) utilizing wireless smart sensor networks (WSSNs). These efforts have focused on improving the performance and robustness of such networks to achieve high quality data acquisition and distributed, in-network processing. One of the primary challenges still facing the use of smart sensors for long-term monitoring deployments is their limited power resources. Periodically accessing the sensor nodes to change batteries is not feasible or economical in many deployment cases. While energy harvesting techniques show promise for prolonging unattended network life, low power design and operation are still critically important. This research presents the WiSeMote: a new, fully integrated ultra-low power wireless smart sensor node and a flexible base station, both designed for long-term SHM deployments. The power consumption of the sensor nodes and base station has been minimized through careful hardware selection and the implementation of power-aware network software, without sacrificing flexibility and functionality.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.509-521
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• 2014

In this paper two protocols of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are examined through both a simulation and a case study. The simulation was performed with the optimized network (OPNET) simulator while comparing the performance of the Ad-Hoc on demand Distance Vector (AODV) and the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocols. This is compared and shown with real-world measurement of deflection from eight wireless sensor nodes. The wireless sensor response results were compared with accelerometer sensors for validation purposes. It was found that although the computer simulation suggests the AODV protocol is more accurate, in the case study no distinct difference was found. However, it was shown that AODV is still more beneficial in the field as it has a longer battery life enabling longer surveying times. This is a significant finding as a large factor in determining the use of wireless network sensors as a method of assessing structural response has been their short battery life. Thus if protocols which enhance battery life, such as the AODV protocol, are employed it may be possible in the future to couple wireless networks with solar power extending their monitoring periods.