Wireless Networks Bridge Bridges

Anyone who witnessed what the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake did to San Francisco Bay Area bridges in 1989 knows why Lehigh University professor Yunfeng Zhang's research is important.

Zhang is fitting bridges with networks of tiny sensors with built-in computer chips that monitor the stability and safety of highway bridges and overpasses. According to Zhang, who recently received a a five-year, $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation for his project which is entitled "Integrated Research and Education in Smart Sensing and Intelligent Structures Technology" wireless sensor networks avoid many of the problems that hamper wired sensors.

To improve data transmission and management, he is developing high-performance sensor data compression algorithms for structural health monitoring applications. His algorithms incorporate structural system information to remove redundancies from sensor data and thus maximize the compression rates for sensor network data. Zhang also uses data-mining techniques to extract key information more efficiently from data.

As part of his NSF project, Zhang plans to implement a wireless sensor network on a cable-stayed bridge in eastern China. For details, see http://www.lehigh.edu/~yuz8/.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:00 AM  Permalink