An Empirical characterization of concrete channel and modulation schemes with piezoelectric transducers based transceivers

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring plays a vital role in improving the safety and maintainability of critical engineering structures. A network comprised of Piezo-electric sensors and actuators has been devised to monitor the condition of concrete structures. A feasible data communication mechanism for sensor networks is needed to ensure effective transmission of information regarding the structural health conditions from sensor nodes to the central processing unit. This thesis work lays the foundation toward designing a communication system using stress waves modulated with information inside concrete structure. The following tasks are essential in designing an effective communication system, namely, i) measurements of concrete channel response, ii) measurements of different modulation schemes, and iii) the design of receiver amplifier based on Automatic gain control technique. The proposed solution utilizes GNU Radio, a software development toolkit to implement different modulation schemes and Universal Software Radio Peripheral to connect the hardware (concrete channel) with software-defined radios.