NATURAL SYNCHRONIZATION OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS FOR STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING

Abstract

Time synchronization in communication networks is a common issue: in a sensor network it means that the order of data samples becomes uncertain, which can make it unusable. Dedicated signals and schemes for synchronization of sensor networks has hence been a well-researched topic for decades. Here we bring in an approach to synchronization which uses the sensory data. Drawing inspiration from sensor time synchronization using environmental noise, we consider synchronizing sensory nodes for structural health monitoring–if the physical quantity the sensors measure is correlated, propagating as a wave, or oscillating in regular fashion, it is intuitively clear how to put it to use. We discuss when structural health monitoring signals can aid synchronization; we also connect this synchronization scheme to the idea of using physical human-made structures as reservoirs for reservoir computing, formulating synchronization as a reservoir computing task.