Impacts of structural vibration on the performance of ultrasound sensor networks powered by vibration-harvested energy

摘要

This paper develops an energy-aware ultrasonic sensor network architecture using a Pulse Switching approach for lightweight, through-substrate operation in Structural Health Monitoring applications. Pulse Switching protocols employ single pulses instead of multi-bit packets for information delivery with maximal lightness in event monitoring with binary sensing requirements i.e. where event information transmitted is only a single bit (YES / NO) based on evaluation of structural characteristics. The paper presents a simulation study of the Energy-Aware Through-Substrate Pulse Switching protocol performance for structural monitoring when operated using energy harvested from intermittent vibrations in the structure itself. The paper incorporates an energy harvesting model for simulating memory-less vibration patterns using exponentially distributed random processes at different networked nodes. These nodes are placed inside a rectangular plate structure and the corresponding harvested energy profiles are simulated. The vibration profiles are a function of the position of the node on the plate as well as time. Such spatio-temporal variation leads to interesting dynamics in the energy-aware protocol operation which have been explored in the current paper setting. Through the simulations, it is shown that the proposed Energy-Aware Pulse Switching protocol mechanisms can offer a robust through-substrate network that can be reliably used for Structural Health Monitoring using vibration-harvested energy.