An RFID-Enabled Wireless Strain Gauge Sensor for Static and Dynamic Structural Monitoring

Strain gauge measurements are widely used in structural health monitoring and damage detection of existing infrastructures as well as in laboratory prototyping tests of new structures and materials. Wireless sensing of strain gauge is desirable in many practical applications because of the difficulty to access at the measurement point or to handle wired sensors. In this paper, we show a semi-passive wireless strain gauge sensor, which allows a high level of measurement accuracy comparable with that of wired strain sensors. It overcomes the limits and drawbacks of devices based on wireless sensor networks and those based on similar RFID-based sensors. The ability to perform measurements over long distances and to handle fast time-varying phenomena (e.g., vibration) makes the proposed device practical in realistic scenarios.