Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 23-9 - 48

are accessible via the Read
Transducer Channel dataset segment command.
The acquisition of the
displacement is carried
out in the same way; the
only difference is that TIM
has only one acquisition
channel associated with a
displacement sensor.

Conclusions
The combination of the different infrastructures and
services inside a city will
contribute to increasing the
quality of persons living in
it. At the same time, global
efficiency is also increased.
Using the IEEE1451 family
of standards, it is possible to design sensor nodes,
responsible to perform specialized tasks, and interact
with other elements in the
network to offer a valuable
service to the community.
The proposed solution uses
a method capable of detectFig. 6. Building monitor and protect sensor nodes. (a) Accelerometer sensor transducer channel. (b) Extensometer sensor
ing in real time the arrival
transducer channel. (c) Actuator transducer channel.
of a destructive earthquake
and broadcasting a warnin a vector group. Two problems can be identified in the ing signal to all of the responsible parties. While some groups
implementation of these network nodes. The first is that com- are responsible for turnning water, gas and electricity systems
munication in the IEEE1451 standard is always initiated by the off to avoid the consequences of the earthquake, a monitoring
NCAP. This situation requires the nodes to have their radios al- structure system has also been proposed to verify the healthy
ways active so that they can receive the information from the status of a building after an earthquake event. The interaction
NCAP. This solution has energy costs that are not compatible of all the systems proposed can occur only if all of the sensors
with the harvest of energy from the environment. An attractive are able to interoperate, the primary reason why the stansolution is the adoption of a wake-up radio, in parallel with the dard IEEE1451 family seems to be the best tool that fits those
main radio. This allows the node to be kept in an energy-sav- scenarios.
ing mode when not in operation.
Another problem is the synchronization of the acquisition References
process. To solve this issue, the channels operate in free-run- [1] S. Esposito, S. Giovinazzi, L. Elefante, and I. Iervolino, " Postearthquake physical damage assessment for gas networks, " in
ning sampling mode with pre-trigger. The acquisition channel
Proc. 9th Pacific Conf. Earthquake Engineering, Apr. 2011.
moves to the operative status whenever the EED node sends
the first warning message. The sampling procedure starts, but [2] P. L. Metropolo and A. E. P. Brown, " Natural gas pipeline accident
consequence analysis, " Process Safety Progress in Proc. Safety Prog.,
samples are saved in the dataset only until a pre-defined numvol. 23, no. 4, 2004.
ber (pre-count) is reached. After that, with each new sample
entry in the dataset, the oldest sample is discarded. With all [3] G. Monte, Z. Liu, F. Abate, V. Paciello, A. Pietrosanto, and V.
Huang, " Normalizing transducer signals: an overview of a
nodes in this state of operation, awaiting the receipt of a trigproposed standard, " in Proc. IEEE Int. Instrum. Meas. Technol.
ger, it is possible to achieve synchronization of the acquisition
Conf. (I2MTC), pp. 614-619, 2014.
process between all nodes in the network, with the trigger being sent by the EED node through a broadcast for the entire [4] IEEE Recommended Practice for Signal Treatment Applied to Smart
Transducers, 21451-001-2017, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://
network. The acquisition process ends when the dataset is
standards.ieee.org/standard/21451-001-2017.html.
complete. The channel data stored in the respective datasets
48

IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine

December 2020

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Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 23-9

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