Our society depends heavily on a network of buildings, bridges and roadways. In order to properly maintain this civil infrastructure and avoid damage and costly repairs due to structural failure, it is necessary to monitor the health of these structures. Sensors must frequently be placed in inaccessible locations under harsh conditions and should ideally last the lifetime of the structure the sensors are monitoring. This paper presents the development of a low cost, passive, un-powered wireless analog resistance sensor. The sensor was originally designed for monitoring corrosion in concrete, but there are many other potential applications including remote temperature monitoring, embedded accelerometers, and embedded strain gauges. The passive wireless nature makes the sensor ideally suited for embedding in inaccessible locations under harsh conditions. The sensor consists of a resonant inductor-capacitor circuit containing a resistive transducer. The sensor is interrogated by measuring the impedance through a remote, magnetically coupled reader loop. The width of the resonance is directly related to the resistance of the transducer. The sensor has been simulated under a variety of conditions using a circuit model and compared to actual test sensors built and evaluated in the laboratory.
[1]
Joseph A. Paradiso,et al.
A New Continuous Multimodal Musical Controller Using Wireless Magnetic Tags
,
1999,
ICMC.
[2]
Joseph A. Paradiso,et al.
Swept-frequency, magnetically-coupled resonant tags for realtime, continuous, multiparameter control
,
1999,
CHI EA '99.
[3]
Kristi M. Grizzle,et al.
Development of a Wireless Sensor Used to Monitor Corrosion in Reinforced Concrete Structures
,
2003
.
[4]
Sharon L. Wood,et al.
Development of state sensors for civil engineering structures
,
2003,
SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring.