The spatial characteristics, modal filtering and modal sensitivities of distributed segmented sensor patches laminated on a cylindrical shell are investigated. A sensor equation of a generic shell sensor patch reveals that the output signal is determined by a number of factors, such as geometries, material properties, mode numbers, sensor locations, spatial distributions, strains, etc. An arbitrary sensor patch and also quarterly segmented sensor patches are investigated. All quadruples of shell natural modes are not observable in the quarterly segmented sensor configuration, due to the charge averaging on effective surface electrodes. The total sensor sensitivity of a sensor patch is composed of a membrane sensitivity and a bending sensitivity which are related to the membrane strain and the bending strain, respectively. Based on the modal sensitivities, a number of sensor parameters (e.g., sensor thickness, shell thickness, curvature angles and shell sizes) are evaluated, and their membrane, bending and total sensitivities are compared.