Development of hierarchical sensor network system for infrastructure monitoring

This paper presents a concept and an implementation of hierarchical sensor network for sensing of civil infrastructures. As an example, implementation of hierarchical localization method applicable for large scale sensor network is presented. This system consists of parent nodes with a low priced L1 GPS receiver and child nodes with an acoustic ranging device. Relative positions between child nodes are estimated based on acoustic ranging through a distributed scalable algorithm, called inverse Delaunay algorithm. Relatively localized child sensor nodes are given global coordinates with the help of centimeters accuracy GPS on parent nodes.