Wireless Measuring System for Monitoring the Condition of Devices Designed to Protect Line Structures

Abstract

A large number of rock formations in the Czech Republic and abroad directly threaten to damage objects or traffic along the roads located beneath these formations. For this reason, many such rock formations are stabilized using protective fences or dynamic barriers. There are several special sensors available on the market. However, there is no comprehensive monitoring system, including remote threshold settings, data processing, and alarm conditions. This statement is supported by extensive research in this area as well as information from major geotechnical companies that are interested in such a system and want to include it in their portfolio. The aim of the article is to describe the unique wireless monitoring system used to measure the geotechnical quantities we have developed. The design and implementation of systems used to measure protective fence states with accelerometers and slope shift with load anchor cells are presented. Wireless accelerometric sensors and load anchor cell sensors are proposed for both systems. To transfer data from the accelerometer sensor to a superior system, IQRF® technology is applied for the communication between the wireless nodes and the network coordinator under the IQMESH topology. The article includes a detailed description of the development of the accelerometric wireless sensor node and load anchor cell wireless sensor node. Three case studies are also discussed. The first case study focuses on the data implementation and assessment at a testing polygon at the village of Málkov. The second case study describes the data implementation and an assessment of the measuring system under operating conditions in Zbraslav, a municipality near Prague. The third case study describes the implementation and assessment of data from load anchor cell wireless nodes installed in realistic conditions on a supporting gabion wall next to a road. All communication between the sensors and with the IQMESH network coordinator and database was executed wirelessly. The data were archived in a MySQL database and it provides a data source for the assessment and visualizations using the Grafana SW system.