Summary Review of GPS Technology for Structural Health Monitoring
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 10
Abstract
Over the last two decades, global positioning system (GPS) technology has been developed rapidly and recently applied to civil structures for appropriate monitoring of structural performance. Currently, the GPS technique can only be applied to flexible structures having lower modal frequency ranges, and it still has remaining issues when it comes to obtaining accurate measurements. However, the application of GPS is promising as a monitoring tool because it can measure dynamic characteristics and static displacements in real time, whereas the conventional monitoring system using accelerometers cannot measure static and quasi-static displacements. Furthermore, rapid advancements in GPS devices and algorithms can mitigate erroneous sources of GPS data, and integrated systems using GPS receivers with other supplement sensors are capable of providing accurate measurements. Therefore, GPS technology can provide accurate displacements of structures in real time, and stress and strain conditions of the structures can be computed using finite-element models and numerical analyses. It is also expected that damage localization and severity can be identified using the dynamic characteristics of structures obtained from GPS. This paper summarizes the use of GPS technology for structural health monitoring.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant (Code 10 Technology Innovation E05) from the Construction Technology Innovation Program funded by the Ministry of Land, Transportation and Maritime Affairs (MLTM) of the Korean government.
References
Aram, M., El-Rabbany, A., Krishnan, S., and Anpalagan, A. (2007). “Single frequency multipath mitigation based on wavelet analysis.” J. Navig., 60(02), 281–290.
Ashkenazi, Z., and Roberts, G. W. (1997). “Experimental monitoring of the Humber bridge using GPS.” Proc. Inst. Civil Eng., 120(4), 177–182.
Breuer, P., Chmielewski, T., Gorski, P., and Konopka, E. (2002). “Application of GPS technology to measurements of displacements of high-rise structures due to weak winds.” J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., 90(3), 223–230.
Brown, C. J., Karuna, R., Ashkenazi, V., Roberts, G. W., and Evans, R. A. (1999). “Monitoring of structures using the global positioning system.” Proc. Inst. Civil Eng, 134(1), 97–105.
Brownjohn, J. M. W., Moyo, P., Rizos, C., and Chuan, T. S. (2003). “Practical issues in using novel sensors in SHM of civil infrastructure: Problems and solutions in implementation of GPS and fibre optics.” Proc., 4th Int. Workshop on SHM, Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA, 499–506.
Brownjohn, J. M. W., Rizos, C., Tan, G., and Pan, T. (2004). “Real-time long-term monitoring of static and dynamic displacements of an office tower, combining RTK GPS and accelerometer data.” 1st FIG Int. Symp. on Engineering Surveys for Construction Works and Structural Engineering, Nottingham, U.K.
Casciati, F., and Fuggini, C. (2009). “Engineering vibration monitoring by GPS: Long duration records.” Earthquake Eng. Eng. Vib., 8(3), 459–467.
Celebi, M. (2000). “GPS in pioneering dynamic monitoring of long-period structures.” Soil. Dyn. Earthquake Eng., 20(5–8), 477–483.
Celebi, M., Prescott, W., Stein, R., Hudnut, K., Behr, J., and Wilson, S. (1998). “GPS monitoring of structures: Recent advances.” NIST Special Publication SP, 931, 515–528.
Celebi, M., Prescott, W., Stein, R., Hudnut, K., Behr, J., and Wilson, S. (1999). “GPS monitoring of dynamic behavior of long-period structures.” Earthq. Spectra, 15(1), 55–66.
Celebi, M., and Sanli, A. (2002). “GPS in pioneering dynamic monitoring of long-period structures.” Earthq. Spectra, 18(1), 47–61.
Chan, W., Xu, Y., Ding, X., Xiong, Y., and Dai, W. (2006a). “Assessment of dynamic measurement accuracy of GPS in three directions.” J. Surv. Eng., 132(3), 108–117.
Chan, W. S., Xu, Y. L., Ding, X. L., and Dai, W. J. (2006b). “An integrated GPS-accelerometer data processing technique for structural deformation monitoring.” J. Geod., 80(12), 705–719.
Cosser, E., Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. H. (2004). “Single frequency GPS for bridge deflection monitoring: progress and results.” 1st FIG Int. Symp. on Engineering Surveys for Construction Works and Structural Engineering, Nottingham, U.K.
Dai, L., Zhang, J., Rizos, C., Han, S., and Wang, J. (2000). “GPS and pseudolite integration for deformation monitoring applications.” Proc., 13th Int. Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of the U.S. Institute of Navigation, 1–8.
Daly, P. (1993). “Navstar GPS and GLONASS: Global satellite navigation systems.” Electro Commun. Eng. J., 5(6), 349–357.
Duff, K., and Hyzak, M. (1997). “Structural monitoring with GPS.” Public Roads, 60(4), 39–44.
Forward, T., Stewart, M., Penna, N., and Tsakiri, M. (2001). “Steep wall monitoring using switched antenna arrays and permanent GPS network.” 10th FIG Int. Symp. on Deformation Measurements, Orange, CA, 33–41.
Fujino, Y., et al. (2000). “Forced and ambient vibration tests and vibration monitoring of Hakucho Suspension Bridge.” Transportation Research Record 1696, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC, 57–63.
Gili, J. A., Corominas, J., and Rius, J. (2000). “Using global positioning system techniques in landslide monitoring.” Eng. Geol., 55(3), 167–192.
Guo, J., Xu, L., Dai, L., McDonald, M., Wu, J., and Li, Y. (2005). “Application of the real-time kinematic global positioning system in bridge safety monitoring.” J. Bridge Eng., 10(2), 163–168.
Hann, C. E., Singh-Levett, I., Deam, B. L., Mander, J. B., and Chase, J. G. (2009). “Real-time system identification of a nonlinear four-story steel frame structure—Application to structural health monitoring.” IEEE Sens. J., 9(11), 1339–1346.
Hudnut, K. W., and Behr, J. A. (1998). “Continuous GPS monitoring of structural deformation at Pacoima Dam, California.” Seismol. Res. Lett., 69(4), 299–308.
Jiang, J. J., Lu, X., and Guo, J. J. (2002). “Study for real-time monitoring of large-span bridge using GPS.” Progress in safety science and technology, Science Press, New York, 308–312.
Kaloop, M. R., and Li, H. (2011). “Sensitivity and analysis GPS signals based bridge damage using GPS observations and wavelet transform.” Measurement, 44(5), 927–937.
Kijewski-Correa, T., Kareem, A., and Kochly, M. (2006). “Experimental verification and full-scale deployment of global positioning systems to monitor the dynamic response of tall buildings.” J. Struct. Eng., 132(8), 1242–1253.
Kijewski-Correa, T., and Kochly, M. (2007). “Monitoring the wind-induced response of tall buildings: GPS performance and the issue of multipath effects.” J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., 95(9–11), 1176–1198.
Kijewski-Correa, T., Kochly, M., and Stowell, J.(2004). “On the emerging role of GPS in structural health monitoring.” Proc., Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat 2004, Seoul.
Larocca, A. P. C. (2004). “Using high-rate GPS data to monitor the dynamic behaviour of a cable-stayed bridge.” 17th Int. Tech. Meeting of the Satellite Divison of the U.S. Institute of Navigation, Long Beach, CA, 225–234.
Larocca, A. P. C., Schaal, R. E., Santos, M. C., and Langley, R. B. (2005). “Monitoring the deflection of the Pierre-Laporte suspension bridge with the phase residual method.” ION GNSS 18th Int. Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division, Long Beach, CA, 2023–2028.
Larson, K. M., Bilich, A., and Axelrad, P. (2007). “Improving the precision of high-rate GPS.” J. Geophys. Res., 112, B05422.
Lee, J. J., and Shinozuka, M. (2006). “A vision-based system for remote sensing of bridge displacement.” NDT Int., 39(5), 425–431.
Li, X., Ge, L., Ambikairajah, E., Rizos, C., Tamura, Y., and Yoshida, A. (2006). “Full-scale structural monitoring using an integrated GPS and accelerometer system.” GPS Solut., 10(4), 233–247.
Lovse, J. W., Teskey, W. F., Lachapelle, G., and Cannon, M. E. (1995). “Dynamic deformation monitoring of tall structure using GPS technology.” J. Surv. Eng., 121(1), 35–40.
Masri, S. F., Sheng, L.-H., Caffrey, J. P., Nigbor, R. L., Wahbeh, M., and Abdel-Ghaffar, A. M. (2004). “Application of a web-enabled real-time structural health monitoring system for civil infrastructure systems.” Smart Mater. Struct., 13(6), 1269–1283.
Meng, X., Dodson, A. H., and Roberts, G. W. (2007). “Detecting bridge dynamics with GPS and triaxial accelerometers.” Eng. Struct., 29(11), 3178–3184.
Meng, X., Roberts, G. W., Cosser, E., and Dodson, A. H. (2003). “Real-time bridge deflection and vibration monitoring using an integrated GPS/accelerometer/pseudolite system.” Proc., 11th FIG Symp. on Deformation Measurements, Santorini, Greece.
Meng, X., Roberts, G. W., Dodson, A. H., Cosser, E., Barnes, J., and Rizos, C. (2004). “Impact of GPS satellite and pseudolite geometry on structural deformation monitoring: Analytical and empirical studies.” J. Geod., 77(12), 809–822.
Meo, M., Zumpano, G., Meng, X., Cosser, E., Roberts, G., and Dodson, A. (2006). “Measurements of dynamic properties of a medium span suspension bridge by using the wavelet transforms.” Mech. Syst. Signal Process., 20(5), 1112–1133.
Moschas, F., and Stiros, S. (2011). “Measurement of the dynamic displacements and of the modal frequencies of a short-span pedestrian bridge using GPS and an accelerometer.” Eng. Struct., 33(1), 10–17.
Nickitopoulou, A., Protopsalti, K., and Stiros, S. (2006). “Monitoring dynamic and quasi-static deformations of large flexible engineering structures with GPS: Accuracy, limitations and promises.” Eng. Struct., 28(10), 1471–1482.
Norgard, P. (1996). “Deformation survey of the Storebaelt bridge—GPS shows its merits.” Geomatics Info. Mag., 10(4), 37–39.
Ogaja, C., Li, X., and Rizos, C. (2007). “Advances in structural monitoring with global positioning system technology: 1997–2006.” J. Applied Geodesyst., 1(3), 171–179.
Ogaja, C., and Satirapod, C. (2007). “Analysis of high-frequency multipath in 1-Hz GPS kinematic solutions.” GPS Solutions, 11(4), 269–280.
Park, H. S., Lee, H. M., and Adeli, H. (2007). “A new approach for health monitoring of structures: Terrestrial laser scanning.” Comput. Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng., 22, 19–30.
Psimoulis, P., Pytharouli, S., Karambalis, D., and Stiros, S. (2008). “Potential of global positioning system (GPS) to measure frequencies of oscillations of engineering structures.” J. Sound Vibrat., 318(3), 606–623.
Psimoulis, P. A., and Stiros, S. C. (2008). “Experimental assessment of the accuracy of GPS and RTS for the determination of the parameters of oscillation of major structures.” Comput. Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng., 23, 389–402.
Rizos, C., Han, S., Ge, L., Chen, H., Hatanaka, Y., and Abe, K. (2000). “Low-cost densification of permanent GPS networks for natural hazard mitigation: First tests on GSI's GEONET network.” Earth Planets Space, 52(10), 867–871.
Roberts, G. W., Cosser, E., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. (2004a). “High frequency deflection monitoring of bridges by GPS.” J. Global Positioning Systems, 3(1–2), 226–231.
Roberts, G. W., Dodson, A. H., and Ashkenazi, V. (1999). “Twist and deflection: Monitoring motion of Humber Bridge.” GPS World, 10, 24–34.
Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. H. (2000). “Structural dynamic and deflection monitoring using integrated GPS and triaxial accelerometer.” ION GPS, Salt Lake City, 59–68.
Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. H. (2001a). “Data processing and multipath mitigation for GPS/accelerometer based hybrid structural deflection monitoring system.” ION GPS, Salt Lake City, 473–481.
Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. H. (2001b). “The use of kinematic GPS an triaxial acceleratometers to monitor the deflections of large bridges.” Proc., 10th FIG Int. Symp. on Deformation Measurements, 268–275.
Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. H. (2002a). “Using adaptive filtering to detect multipath and cycle slips in GPS/accelerometer bridge deflection monitoring data.” FIG XXII Int. Congress, Washington, DC.
Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., and Dodson, A. H. (2004b). “Integrating a global positioning system and accelerometers to monitor the deflection of bridges.” J. Surv. Eng., 130(2), 65–72.
Roberts, G. W., Meng, X., Dodson, A. H., and Cosser, E. (2002b). “Multipath mitigation for bridge deformation monitoring.” J. Global Positioning Systems, 1(1), 25–33.
Satirapod, C., and Rizos, C. (2005). “Multipath mitigation by wavelet analysis for GPS base station applications.” Survey Rev., 38(295), 2–10.
Shannon, C. E. (1949). “Communication in the presence of noise.” Proc., Institute of Radio Engineers, 37(1), 10–21, reprint as classic paper in Proc. IEEE, 86(2), 1998.
Shengxiang, H., Xiangsheng, J., and Baocen, Y. (2006). “Characteristics of multipath effects in GPS dynamic deformation monitoring.” Geo-spatial Inform. Sci., 9(2), 79–83.
Smyth, A., and Wu, M. (2007). “Multi-rate Kalman filtering for the data fusion of displacement and acceleration response measurements in dynamic system monitoring.” Mech. Syst. Signal Process., 21(2), 706–723.
Spiegel. (2010). “EU expects Galileo project costs to explode.” 〈http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,721761,00.html〉 (Jun. 24, 2011).
Tamura, Y., Matsui, M., Pagnini, L., Ishibashi, R., and Yoshida, A. (2002). “Measurement of wind-induced response of buildings using RTK-GPS.” J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aerodyn., 90(12–15), 1783–1793.
Teague, E. H., How, J. P., Lawson, L. G., and Parkinson, B. W. (1995). “GPS as a structural deformation sensor.” AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conf., Baltimore, 787–795.
Tolman, B. W., and Craig, B. K. (1997). “An integrated GPS/accelerometer system for low dynamics applications.” Proc., Int. Symp. on Kinematic Systems in Geodesy, Geomatics, and Navigation, Banff, AB, Canada, 151–159.
Wahbeh, A. M., Caffrey, J. P., and Masri, S. F. (2003). “A vision-based approach for the direct measurement of displacements in vibrating systems.” Smart Mater. Struct., 12(5), 785–794.
Wang, J. (2002). “Pseudolite applications in positioning and navigation: Progress and problems.” J. Global Positioning Systems, 1(1), 48–56.
Wang, J., Tsujii, T., Rizos, C., Dai, L., and Moore, M. (2001). “GPS and pseudo-satellites integration for precise positioning.” Geomatics Res. Australasia, 74, 103–117.
Watson, C., Watson, T., and Coleman, R. (2007). “Structural monitoring of cable-stayed bridge: Analysis of GPS versus modeled deflections.” J. Surv. Eng., 133(1), 23–28.
Wieser, A., and Brunner, F. K. (2002). “Analysis of bridge deformations using continuous GPS measurements.” 2nd Conf. of Engineering Surveying, Bratislava, Slovakia, 45–52.
Wong, K. Y., Man, K. L., and Chan, W. Y. (2001a). “Application of global positioning system to structural health monitoring of cable-supported bridges.” Proc. SPIE, 4337, 390–401.
Wong, K. Y., Man, K. L., and Chan, W. Y. (2001b). “Monitoring Hong Kong’s bridges: Real-time kinematic spans the gap.” GPS World, 12(7), 10–18.
Xinzheng, L., Ning, Y., and Jianjing, J. (2004). “Application of computer simulation technology for structure analysis in disaster.” Autom. Construct., 13(5), 597–606.
Yoshida, A., Tamura, Y., Matsui, M., and Ishibashi, S. (2003). “Integrity monitoring of buildings by hybrid use of RTK-GPS and FEM analysis.” Structural Health Monitoring and Intelligent Infrastructure, 1 and 2, 963–970.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 10 • October 2013
Pages: 1653 - 1664
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 1, 2011
Accepted: Aug 2, 2011
Published online: Aug 5, 2011
Published in print: Oct 1, 2013
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.