The contents of this project exemplifies the interdisciplinary nature of Systems Engineering — a phased implementation with design, development, and iterative pilot testing of an engineering system which draws from aspects of Telecommunications, Electrical, Computer and Mechanical Engineering.
The team worked on the design of a wireless system for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). This system will be used to remotely detect damage of aerospace, civil and mechanical engineering infrastructures. By utilizing small, low-power digital radios coupled with an antenna designed to meet specific performance standards, our team hopes to increase the viability of SHM. As mentioned, the project involves reliable wireless communication, the design and fabrication of an electronic system, the programming of logic circuits and structural health sensors, which correspond to our requirement of an interdisciplinary project encompassing Telecommunications, Electrical, Computer and Mechanical Engineering respectively.
During the project we designed, simulated and tested an antenna which operates at a center frequency of 2.45 GHz, developed a system to record and transmit data from piezoelectric sensors and transmit them wirelessly a distance of 50 meters with superior accuracy.
