Recent advances in wireless sensor networks for structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure

Wireless Smart Sensor Networks (WSSN) have seen significant advancements in recent years. They act as a core part of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems by facilitating efficient measurement, assessment, and hence maintenance of civil infrastructure. This paper presents the latest technology developments of WSSN in the last ten years, including ones for a single sensor node and those for a network of nodes. Focus is placed on critical aspects of such advancements, including event-triggered sensing, multimeric sensing, edge/cloud computing, time synchronization, real-time data acquisition, decentralized data processing, and long-term reliability. In addition, full-scale applications and demonstrations of WSSN in SHM are also summarized. Finally, the remaining challenges and future research directions of WSSN are discussed to promote the further development and applications.