A Novel IoT-based Edge Sensing Platform for Structure Health Monitoring

The emerging framework of 5G, together with the Edge Computing (EC) paradigm, has enabled a number of smart applications in many different scenarios. In the context of smart cities and intelligent transportation systems, Structure Health Monitoring (SHM) has gained increasing attention lately, due to the critical conditions of specific civil infrastructures, which led to unfortunate accidents. In this connection, we propose a low-cost, versatile and self-sustaining platform based on the Narrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT) technology aimed at efficiently and continuously monitoring the conditions of critical civil structures. We also provide both lab and in-site experimental tests comparing the performance obtained with our prototype with respect to professional monitoring equipment. Results show a winning trade-off between performance and unquestionable advantages in deployment, use, maintenance and costs.