System to monitor the health of a structure, sensor nodes, program product, and related methods

The system as defined in claim, 1,

• wherein the parameter processing program product includes instructions to perform the operations of:
• sampling sensor output from the associated sensor element to thereby form the raw sensor data, for the respective node,
• iteratively comparirig the raw sensor data to prior trend data describing a prior trend in the raw sensor data, to thereby determine a current trend in the raw sensor data, and
• fitting a descriptive curve to the current trend in the raw sensor data to thereby describe the current trend in the raw sensor data;
• and
• wherein the reduced data includes parameters describing the fitted curve.

A method to monitor the structural health of a structure, the method comprising the steps of:

• positioning a health monitoring sensor node, on or within a body of a structure to be monitored;
• sensing parameters of the body of the structure by the health monitoring sensor node to define sensed parameters;
• processing the sensed parameters by the health monitoring sensor node to define raw sensor data;
• reducing the raw sensor data by the health monitoring sensor node to define reduced data to thereby substantially reduce wireless transmission bandwidth requirements between the health monitoring sensor node and a data collector over that required for providing the raw sensor data, the reduced data comprising one or more of the following:
• one or more parameters describing one or more threshold crossing events, and one or more parameters describing a trend of the raw sensor data;
• and
• providing the reduced data to the data collector over the wireless communication medium.

A method to monitor the structural health of a structure, the method comprising the steps of:

• positioning a health monitoring sensor node, including a sensor element on or within a body of a structure to be monitored;
• sampling sensor output by the health monitoring sensor node from the associated sensor element to thereby form raw sensor data;
• comparing a value of the raw sensor data to a threshold value by the health monitoring sensor node, to thereby determine if the threshold value is exceeded;
• incrementing an event count by the health monitoring sensor node responsive to determining that the threshold value is exceeded;
• adaptively resetting by the health monitoring sensor node the threshold value to define an adaptive threshold responsive to the event count exceeding at least one predetermined value;
• receiving by the health monitoring sensor node an interrogation signal from an interrogator over a wireless communication medium;
• and
• responsive to receiving the interrogation signal, the health monitoring sensor node providing to the interrogator one or more of the following forms of reduced raw sensor data over the wireless communication medium:
• data indicating a number of threshold crossings, data indicating a number of threshold crossings for each respective threshold value, data indicating a final state of the adaptive threshold, and data indicating a time history of the adaptive threshold, the reduced raw sensor data having a reduced transmission bandwidth requirement over that which would be required to provide the interrogator the raw sensor data.

A method to monitor the structural health of a structure, the method comprising the steps of:

• positioning a wireless health monitoring sensor node on or within a body of a structure to be monitored, each node including a sensor element;
• sampling sensor output by the wireless health monitoring sensor node from the associated sensor element to thereby form raw sensor data;
• the health monitoring sensor node iteratively comparing the raw sensor data to prior trend data describing a prior trend in the raw sensor data, to thereby determine a current trend in the raw sensor data;
• the health monitoring sensor node receiving an interrogation signal from an interrogator over a wireless communication medium;
• and
• responsive to the interrogation signal, the health monitoring sensor node providing to the interrogator over the wireless communication medium indicia of the current trend in the raw sensor data defining reduced data, the reduced data providing a reduced data transmission bandwidth requirement over that of a raw sensor data transmission bandwidth requirement to thereby provide reduced data collisions between the health monitoring sensor node and at least one other health monitoring sensor node.