Damage localization using a power-efficient distributed on-board signal processing algorithm in a wireless sensor network

A distributed on-board algorithm that is embedded and executed within a group of wireless sensors to locate structural damages in isotropic plates is presented. The algorithm is based on an energy-decay model of Lamb waves and singular value decomposition (SVD) to determine damage locations. A sensor group consists of a small number of sensors, each of which independently collects wave signals and evaluates wave energy upon an external triggering signal sent from a base station. The energy values, usually a few bytes in length, are then sent to the base station to determine the presence and location of damages. In comparison with traditional centralized approaches in which whole datasets are required to be transmitted, the proposed algorithm yields much less wireless communication traffic, yet with a modest amount of computation required within sensors. Experiments have shown that the algorithm is robust to locate damage for isotropic plate structures and is very power efficient, with more than an order-of-magnitude power saving.