Closed-loop structural control with real-time smart sensors

Wireless smart sensors, which have become popular for monitoring applications, are an attractive option for implementing structural control systems, due to their onboard sensing, processing, and communication capabilities. However, wireless smart sensors pose inherent challenges for control, including delays from communication, acquisition hardware, and processing time. Previous research in wireless control, which focused on semi-active systems, has found that sampling rate along with time delays can significantly impact control performance. However, because semi-active systems are guaranteed stable, these issues are typically neglected in the control design. This work achieves active control with smart sensors in an experimental setting. Because active systems are not inherently stable, all the elements of the control loop must be addressed, including data acquisition hardware, processing performance, and control design at slow sampling rates. The sensing hardware is shown to have a significant impact on the control design and performance. Ultimately, the smart sensor active control system achieves comparable performance to the traditional tethered system.