Low-cost and distributed health monitoring system for critical buildings

In this paper we present a low-cost distributed embedded system for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) that uses very cost-effective MEMS accelerometers, instead of more expensive piezoelectric analog transducers. The proposed platform provides online filtering and fusion of the collected data directly on-board. Data are transmitted after processing using a WiFi transceiver. Low-cost and synchronized devices permit to have more fine-grained measurements and a comprehensive assessment of the whole building, by evaluating their response to vibrations. The challenge addressed in this paper is to execute a quite computationally-demanding digital filtering on a low-cost microcontroller STM32, and to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio typical of MEMS devices with a spatial redundancy of the sensors. Our work poses the basis for low-cost methods for elaborating complex modal analysis of buildings and structures.