Self-organizing wireless sensor networks for structural health monitoring

A smart sensor node has been developed which has (a) the ability to sense strain of the structure under observation, (b) process this raw sensor data in cooperation with its neighbors and (c) transmit the information to the end user. This network is designed to be self organizing in the sense of establishing and maintaining the inter node connectivity without the need for human intervention. For the envisioned application of structural health monitoring, wireless communication is the most practical solution for node interconnectivity not only because they eliminate interconnecting cables but also for their ability to establish communication links even in inaccessible regions. But wireless nework brings with it a number of issues such as interference, fault tolerant self organizing, multi-hop communication, energy effieiciency, routing and finally reliable operation in spite of massive complexity of the sysetm. This paper addresses the issue of fault tolerant self organiing in wireless sensor networks. We propose a new architecture called the Redundant Tree Network (RTN). RTN is a hierarchical network which exploits redundant links between nodes to provide reliability.