Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Designed to Be Embedded in Reinforced Concrete

This paper presents the McBIM project (Material communicating with the Building Information Modelling) which aspires to provide a communicating reinforced concretes, thus, addresses the design and an implementation of a wireless sensor network devoted to be embedded in reinforced concrete in order to assure structural health monitoring tasks during its entire lifetime. This wireless sensor network is composed of communicating nodes -collecting, processing and sharing with other communicating materials and with virtual models the generated data, and wirelessly powering and controlling the sensing nodes- and sensing nodes -measuring their internal or environmental parameters, pre-processing and transmitting these to the communicating nodes-. The sensing nodes are battery-free and wirelessly powered by a far-field (radiative) wireless power transmission system. Experiments in the air and from a reinforced concrete beam provide encouraging results.