July 2022

Every structure needs to be monitored throughout its useful life in order to ensure an adequate level of safety.

However, one of the main problems in Structural Health Monitoring is the complex and expensive installations. Wired Structural Health Monitoring has proven to be difficult to implement, especially for dense deployment of sensors on large-scale civil infrastructures: the difficulties in cabling, the long setup time, and the costly equipment makes it very challenging. That is the reason why smart wireless sensors are disrupting the industry, as they help overcome many limitations related to traditional wired structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. 

LoRaWAN for smart wireless SHM systems

Wireless monitoring plays an invaluable role in the construction, maintenance and security of infrastructure. Using the LoRaWAN communication protocol for wireless data transmission allows for: 

• communication over large areas (over 10 km in optimal situations);
• low transmission power;
• low energy consumption;
• transmitting raw data with devices that do not have a lot of power backup. 

LoRaWAN uses free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands such as 433Mhz, 868Mhz (Europe) and 915Mhz (North America). Implementing Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems with this communication protocol enables real-time, remote and low-cost monitoring of buildings structural safety and integrity. Without wiring, a whole system can be installed and ready to work in just a couple of hours – which could take a week with wired sensors. 

About Move Solutions

At Move Solutions we commit to leverage the newest technologies to create safer buildings, cities and a smarter and more sustainable planet: that is why we have joined forces with The Things Industry. We have designed a static and dynamic structural monitoring system made up of several wireless sensors that operate with LoRaWAN technology. The sensors send data to an innovative Cloud platform developed with the aim of facilitating the analysis and visualization of data. 

Our Structural Monitoring System has three main elements:

• LoRaWAN wireless sensor network;
• communication gateway;
• management and control platform.

The wireless sensor system uses LoRaWAN to automatically send the measurement information to the gateway which forwards all data via 4G or LTE to the management and control platform (our Cloud Platform).

On the platform the user can remotely set different operating parameters of each sensor, such as frequencies of sampling, resolution and full scale, threshold alarm and activation, and much more. Highly advanced algorithms convert data into useful information to help our clients understand the state of the structure in the short and long term, for punctual and statistical analysis. 

The Internet of Things is giving us the power to solve real problems. IoT technologies together with LoRaWAN are allowing us to build SHM systems in order to address issues properly, while protecting citizens from danger.