Wireless RF Sensor Network Architecture for Real-Time Damage Detection and Health Assessment in Smart Bridges

Abstract

Real-time SHM systems of bridges are developing due to the growing demand of resilience and intelligence of infrastructure. As effective as the traditional wired solutions may be, they are not scalable, have a complex installation process, or have high maintenance burdens. This work suggests a wireless RF sensor system that has the capability to detect damages and evaluate the structure of the smart bridge in real-time (verified by simulation). Integrated onto distributed sensor nodes are vibration and strain sensors, low-power RF transceivers (LoRa/Zigbee), and edge-processing microcontrollers within a system that can be used to autonomously collect and locally analyse data, and transmit to a central monitoring unit wirelessly. The suggested architecture can deal with adaptive sampling, energy-efficient communication rules, and strong coverage of bridge structures with long spans. Packet delivery reliability is high (>98%) and damage alerts have sub-second latency with simulation and testbed evaluations showing node lifetime of over 24 months during the typical duty-cycled operation. In addition, the system realizes great sensitivity to pick structural abnormalities like microcracks and joint displacements. The findings confirm the viability and the robustness of the suggested RF basis WSN framework as the viable option to support the realm of constant, real-time SHM in the contemporary smart bridge infrastructure.