Patent ID: 7558701

Claim:
A multi-node sensor system to monitor the structural, health of a structure, the system comprising: a structure to be monitored having a body; a plurality of separate and spaced apart wireless health monitoring sensor nodes each connected to or embedded within the body of the structure to monitor data related to parameters of a portion of the body of the structure, each node having a sensor element positioned to sense parameters of a respective portion of the body of the structure to define sensed parameters, a processor coupled to the sensor element to receive sensed parameters to define raw sensor data, and memory coupled tothe processorto store operating instructions therein; a data collector having a wireless receiver positioned to collect data individually from each separate one of the plurality of health monitoring sensor nodes over a wireless communication medium; and parameter processing program product separately stored in the memory of each of the plurality of health monitoring sensor nodes and including instructions that when executed by the respective processor performs the operations of: reducing the raw sensor data to define reduced data, and providing the reduced data to the data collector over the wireless communication medium, the reduced data comprising one or more of the following: one or more parameters describing one or more threshold crossing events, and one or more parameters describing a trend of the raw sensor data, and the reduced data providing a substantially reduced wireless transmission bandwidth requirement between the respective one of the plurality of health monitoring sensor nodes and the data collector over that required for providing the raw sensor data.