SENSOR DEVELOPMENT USING BERKELEY MOTE PLATFORM

Industrialised nations have dedicated significant investments toward the development of civil infrastructure. To preserve this investment, attention must be given to proper maintenance. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has emerged as a tool to support this task. Networks of smart sensors, built upon wireless communication, have the potential to significantly improve SHM. Numerous platforms for smart sensors have been developed, most of which utilise proprietary hardware/software. The Berkeley Mote, utilised in this study, was the first open hardware/software platform to be developed. However, the Berkeley Mote was designed for generic applications and therefore the available sensors are not optimised for use in civil infrastructure applications. Acceleration and strain are among the most important physical quantities to judge the health of a structure. Although commercially available sensor boards have accelerometers, their applicability towards civil infrastructure is limited. This paper presents the development of new acceleration and strain sensor boards based on the Berkely-Mote platform and provides experimental verification of their performance within civil infrastructure applications.