A Design for a Remote Condition Monitoring System for an Optical Fibre Smart Structure Based on Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) Machines (ARM) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)
L-B. Shen, Z-M. Zhao, X-Y. Zhu, L. Wang, Q-J. Liu and B-Z. Wei
A remote monitoring system for optical fibre smart structure based on advanced reduced instruction set computing (RISC) machines (ARM) and general packet radio service (GPRS) is presented. The system consists of laser light source, fibre optic intelligent structures, the monitoring host computer and monitoring centre. Monitoring host is made up of advanced reduced instruction set computing (RISC) machines (ARM) and general packet radio service (GPRS) ARM microprocessor and wireless communication module. It is responsible for photoelectric signal acquisition. And the remote monitoring centre is responsible for signal receiving and processing. They communicate with each other through the wireless communication module which is controlled by the monitoring host. The monitoring experiments are carried out by loading on the composites structure. The composite is embedded with optical fibres which are distributed orthogonally forming a sensing network. The data that contain the health status information of the smart composites structure can be received and processed in monitoring centre and the damage position is located. The designed system decreases the negative effect of limitation factors such as the distance, region and time. The results show that the system is stable and reliable. It provides a new method for condition monitoring of optical fibre smart structure.
Keywords: Condition monitoring, optical fibre, smart structure, advanced reduced instruction set computing (RISC) machines (ARM) and general packet radio service (GPRS), HeNe laser