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The Application of Wireless Sensor Networks in Structural Monitoring

 

An emerging modern technology these days is the one known as wireless sensor networks, and this network involves low-powered devices that could analyze factors and monitor architectural structures; with this technological innovation, it is figured that infrastructures may well be more versatile for a variety of applications, like healthcare, automation, surveillance and fortification. Wireless sensors have widened man's capability when it comes to merging the virtual and physical world; there is also rapid development in wireless sensor technology and it has been applied in numerous fields, including industrial process control, security and surveillance, environmental sensing activities and most importantly, structural health monitoring. A wireless sensor network deliver the results by distributing autonomous devices which use sensors and are capable to communicate and organize with one another to monitor physical conditions, specifically in structural health, whereby temperature, sound, vibrations, pressure, and tracked; the wireless sensor network was formerly produced for military functions, but now it performs an important part in tracking structural health of buildings. Other uses for wireless sensor networks include traffic management, healthcare and home automation.

 

On top of the sensors, the autonomous devices that make up the sensor network are also designed with a wireless communication device , a small controller and a power source ; the sensor can be the dimensions of a shoe-box as one of the largest or the dimensions of a grain of dust as one of the most compact. Know more about this here. These sensors also differ in value, determined by its proportions and intricacy and some may even only be worth a number of cents, but some may be worth hundreds of dollars; the dimensions and expense of the sensor is also dependent on the resources that it utilizes, like power, internal memory, the speed in which it can analyze data and bandwidth.

 

These sensors that make up a single wireless network sensor is very versatile when it comes to usage; in terms of structural health, there are many places in a building wherein using wired sensors would be difficult because of space constraints or other issues. With wireless sensors, you can enter any part of a structure effortlessly and with its own battery source that can survive for an extended time; there is no need for to replace it regularly; apart from structural health, you can put them around your building to monitor for any criminals. Wireless sensors at this website are incredibly proficient at monitoring and tracking, hence providing you with more control; besides being used in infrastructures, they are also widely used in habitat monitoring of endangered creatures, nuclear reactor controlling, not to mention large scale environment checking, in which wireless sensors are distributed throughout a region to gather important data regarding the present state of the environment.

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