Enhancing In-Situ Structural Health Monitoring Through RF Energy-Powered Sensor Nodes and Mobile Platform

Abstract

This research contributes to long-term structural health monitoring (SHM) by exploring radio frequency energy-powered sensor nodes (RF-SNs) embedded in concrete. The RF-SN captures radio energy from a mobile radio transmitter for sensing and communication, which offers a cost-effective solution for consistent in-situ perception. To optimize the system performance across various situations, we’ve explored both active and passive communication methods. For the active RF-SN, we implement a specialized control circuit enabling the node to transmit data through ZigBee protocol at low incident power. For the passive RF-SN, radio energy is not only for power but also as a carrier signal, with data conveyed by modulating the amplitude of the backscattered radio wave. To address the challenge of significant attenuation of the backscattering signal in concrete, we utilize a square chirp-based modulation scheme for passive communication. This scheme allows the receiver to successfully decode the data even under a negative signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) condition. Performance modeling and optimization for both active and passive RF-SNs are provided in this study. The experimental results verify that an active RF-SN embedded in concrete at a depth of 13.5 cm can be effectively powered by a 915 MHz mobile radio transmitter with an effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 32.5 dBm. This setup allows the RF-SN to send over 1 kB of data within 10 seconds, with an additional 1.7 kilobytes every 1.6 seconds of extra charging. For the passive RF-SN buried at the same depth, continuous data transmission at a rate of 224 bps with a 3% bit error rate (BER) is achieved when the EIRP of the transmitter is 23.6 dBm.