IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL FEB 2018

The WSN Monitoring System for Large Outdoor

Advertising Boards Based on ZigBee and
MEMS Sensor
Haonan Wang, Linxi Dong, Wei Wei, Wen-Sheng Zhao, Member, IEEE,
Kuiwen Xu, Member, IEEE, and Gaofeng Wang, Senior Member, IEEE

 to track, in real time, the condition of outdoor advertising

Abstract—With the increase of large outdoor advertising boards. However, at present, monitoring outdoor advertising
boards, the issues of public safety raised by the collapse of outdoor
advertising boards have attracted great public concern. In this
boards mainly relies on the common manual inspection and
paper, a wireless sensor network (WSN) monitoring system is video surveillance carried out by the relevant government de-
designed for the structural health monitoring (SHM) of large partments. It is evident that the tilt risk cannot be effectively
outdoor advertising boards. By using the WSN technology, this identified at the earlier stage only by these visual inspection and
system can judge the security of the outdoor advertising boards
and give early warnings when the boards are being in danger. The
simple physical measurements.
monitoring system consists of two subsystems, one is the WSN
structure system based on ZigBee wireless sensor nodes with a
6-axis MEMS motion sensor integrated to capture the movement
information, and the other is the monitoring center system con-
trolled by ARM microcontroller for data processing and
long-distance wireless communications with remote server
through a GPRS module. The simulation model of outdoor ad-
vertising board is also built to analyze the deformed shape of the
advertising board structure under wind load, and the early
warning judgment standard is proposed. The performance of the
monitoring system is evaluated through several experiments un-
der the condition of laboratory in different aspects of the com-
parison experiments. The experimental results indicate that the
WSN monitoring system can real timely and accurately monitor
the state of the outdoor advertising boards.
Fig. 1. Collapsed outdoor advertising board.

Index Terms—Monitoring System, Outdoor Advertising Board, As the rapid developments of the wireless telecommunica-
ZigBee, Wireless Sensor Networks, MEMS Sensor tion and the embedded technology, the sensor technology gets
more and more innovative, and the wireless sensor network
I. INTRODUCTION (WSN) with characteristics of small volume, low power con-

N OWADAYS, large outdoor advertising boards are wide-

spread in the prosperous area of a city, or along the main
road and the highway. These outdoor advertising boards are
liable to tilt or even collapse as time goes on due to their large
size and long exposure in the complex outdoor environment
(such as heavy rain, strong wind, earthquake and other factors),
thereby posing a serious threat to the public safety[1], as shown
in Fig. 1. Therefore, it is important for the relevant departments
This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (No.61376117 and No.61411136003), Key Research and Develop-
ment Plan Project of Zhejiang Province (No.2018C01036), and Natural Science
Foundation of Zhejiang province (LQ15F040006). (Corresponding author:
Linxi Dong)
The authors are all with the Key Laboratory of RF Circuits and System of
Ministry of Education, School of Electronic and Information, Hangzhou Dianzi
University, Hangzhou 310018, China (e-mail: donglinxi@hdu.edu.cn; tel.:
+86-181-5712-8628).
L. Dong is also with State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Infor-
matics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.
sumption, and convenient application has emerged. The reali-
zation of WSN based on embedded system has become a hot
topic in recent years. ZigBee technology, one of the most pop-
ular technologies in the field of WSN, gradually becomes a
dispensable part of people’s life. Due to its flexible character-
istics, ZigBee technology is widely applied in lots of fields,
such as automatic control and remote data acquisition [2]. This
paper demonstrates the safety monitoring system based on the
ZigBee WSN technology for supervising the state of large
outdoor advertising board.
The reminder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
reviews several available solutions to the problem. Section III
introduces the proposed safety monitoring system, while Sec-
tion IV describes the WSN based MEMS sensor, ZigBee, and
the monitoring platform in details. In Section V, the model
setup and preliminary prediction are carried out, with analytical

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algorithms developed. Section VI presents the experimental
results. Some conclusions are finally drawn in Section VII.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW AND STATE OF THE ART
The review presented in this section includes a survey of
commercial methods for the outdoor advertising board moni-
toring and the applications of WSN for structural health mon-
itoring (SHM).
A. Monitoring Systems for Large Outdoor Advertising Board
According to the field investigations and literature, there are
three conventional methods for monitoring the outdoor adver-
tising boards, i.e., video surveillance, radio frequency identi-
fication devices (RFID) based monitoring, and sensor-based
monitoring [3].
The video surveillance mainly uses front-end camera image
acquisition system as well as the 4G networks for data trans-
mission, image processing, and analysis by the server [4].
Monitoring administrators can capture the state of advertising
boards and its surrounding environment by a stationary camera.
This approach is based on image matching contrast recognition
algorithm, which is used to determine the anomalies and
damage situation of boards identify billboard content. However,
the camera method is highly susceptible to the weather. Low
visibility will lead to a sharp decline in the ability of monitoring
and identification. Moreover, it has high installation cost and
requires large amount of data transmission, which makes it
unsuitable for the applications in area with poor network con-
nectivity. Last but most important, this method is insufficient to
judge the internal safety in the billboard structure just from the
image information. Therefore, it is not a good scheme to pre-
vent the security threats aroused from the steel structure of the
outdoor advertising boards.
The monitoring system based on the RFID employs 2.4 GHz
active radio frequency electronic tags to record the initial in-
formation of the outdoor advertising device, such as the attrib-
ute and location information, through the handheld mobile
query device to read the contents of the label and comparing
with the actual situation on the scene [5]. Although this method
has a certain ability of safety monitoring, it requires daily patrol.
Therefore, the RFID-based monitoring technique is also un-
suitable for safety monitoring of outdoor advertising board.
The monitoring system based on sensor obtains the charac-
teristic parameters of the advertising board via the sensor data
statistics analysis [6], [7]. The sensors, such as tilt sensors
installing on the surface of the large advertising boards, can
collect real time vibration response data of the structure,
thereby getting a lot of useful information by analyzing the
sensor data. It is evident that the sensor-based monitoring
technique is the best choice for safety monitoring of large
outdoor advertising boards. However, the present sensor-based
safety monitoring method only uses a fixed threshold as the
basis of judgment. Both the early warning algorithm and the
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coverage of the single monitoring node are limited. As the
overall movement trend of the advertising boards can be
prognosticated by the information of key parts in the boards
obtained by sensor nodes, it is reasonable to apply the WSNs
for the outdoor advertising safety monitoring.
B. Applications of WSN for SHM
The health monitoring system based on WSNs is widely used
in many fields. To date, many studies were reported on appli-
cations of WSN technology in SHM to obtain technical
breakthroughs. Chae et al. [8] proposed a WSN system for
suspension bridge health monitoring. A total of 45 sensors were
installed in the bridge, whose locations and types were deter-
mined by two factors, i.e., bridge behavior and wireless com-
munication stability. ZigBee was used for short distance
communication among sensors and Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) for long-distance wireless communications
with remote locations. The WSN-based bridge health moni-
toring system proposed in [8] was developed with the aim of
ensuring universal applicability and maximizing the ease of
WSN. Hodge et al. [9] surveyed the WSN technology for
monitoring the railway infrastructure. This paper focused on
practical engineering solutions for determining the types, loca-
tions, and missions of the sensor devices. Mirshahi et al. [10]
demonstrated the algorithm for the process of SHM by applying
integration of RFID system with sensor-tags in order to indicate
how communication is carried out throughout the system. Two
methods are proposed where integration based model of RFID
and WSN were firstly investigated for bridge application, and
then the RFID with passive sensor-tags was employed for
SHM.
The WSN technology can reduce installation and mainte-
nance costs of the monitoring system, expand the coverage of
monitoring nodes, and collect more accurate measurement data
through the relevant algorithm analysis. Therefore, in this paper,
the WSN is employed for the outdoor advertising structure
monitoring. Based on the data collected from the pre-installed
sensor nodes, the proposed system can evaluate the real-time
status of the billboard and send out alarm timely in case of
dangerous situation.
III. SYSTEM OUTLINE
In this paper, a safety monitoring system based on WSNs is
proposed for state monitoring and safety warning of outdoor
advertising board. The main monitoring parameter of the sys-
tem is structural inclination, and other types of sensors can be
added to meet different testing requirements. The stability of
overall structure is monitored through a number of WSN nodes
by analyzing the data of MEMS sensors.
The frame structure and composition of wireless outdoor
advertising board safety monitoring system are illustrated in
Fig. 2. The proposed system comprises two main modules: the
ZigBee WSN and ARM Embedded Monitoring and Control
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Center. As the key part of the ZigBee WSN, the ZigBee sensor lution of tri-axis accelerometer is 16384LSB/g, which meets
end-device node is mainly composed of sensor module and the needs of the experiment. The measurement axis of
ZigBee wireless transceiver module, and takes charge of data MPU-6050 is shown in Fig. 4 [12].
acquisition and transmission of tilt angle at the current location.
CLKIN
A ZigBee coordinator and several single ZigBee sensor CLKOUT
CLOCK
MPU-6050
X
end-nodes could form a WSN, and via the wireless data Self test
Accel
ADC
Interrupt
INT

transmission module to realize multi-point data acquisition and Y

Status
Register
Slave I2C
and SPI
(/CS)
AD0/(SDO)
Self test ADC Serial SCL/(SCLK)
communication functions. Then, the statistical measure data Accel
FIFO Interface SDA/(SDI)

Signal Conditioning
will be transferred to the intelligent monitoring and control Self test
Z
ADC
Config
Registers Master
Serial
Interface AUX_CL
Accel I2C Serial
Bypass
center for further analysis and processing. The intelligent Sensor
Registers
Interface
Mux
AUX_DA

FSYNC
monitoring and control center which mainly comprise the ARM Self test
X
Gyro
ADC
Factory
Calibration
embedded control center and GPRS remote communication Y
Digital Motion
Processor(DMP)
Self test ADC
Gyro
module, can make a comprehensive analysis and data pro-
cessing, and then sends the result to the remote server by the Self test
Z
Gyro
ADC

GPRS module. As the result analysis shows that there are Temp
ADC
Sensor Bias & LDO
dangerous situations happening during the monitoring period, Charge
Pump
the system will automatically send warning information to the CPOUT VDD GND REGOUT [VLOGIC]

staffs. Fig. 3. Functional blocks of MPU6050

ARM Embedded
UART Monitoring and UART GPRS Module
Control Center

TCP

ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network Remote Server

ZigBee Sensor End Device ZigBee Coordinator

Fig. 2. The structure of advertising board safety monitoring system.

IV. DEVELOPMENT OF MONITORING SYSTEM

A. Wireless Sensor Node Design Fig. 4. The measurement axis of MPU-6050.
1) Selection of Sensor Module The sensor data fusion algorithms, which used to get the tilt
Sensor module is used to get the tilt angle. In this study, an
angle, consists of one-order complementation algorithm, Kal-
inclinometer based on a MEMS accelerometer was adopted for
man filtering algorithm [13], and quaternion algorithm, etc.
the SHM. The MEMS accelerometer responds to gravity sen-
Considering the computing time and processing efficiency of
sitively. Thus, a MEMS accelerometer sensor in a stationary
nodes, the combination of quaternion algorithm with the DMP
state measures both the static acceleration and the acceleration
of MPU-6050 can not only obtain tilt angle data quickly and
due to gravity. In this case, a certain angle is generated between
easily, but also meet the precision requirement. The tilt angle
the static acceleration and the acceleration due to gravity. This
can be expressed as: roll, rotate angle around the X axis; pitch,
angle corresponds to the slope of the sensor or the so-called tilt.
rotate angle around the Y axis; yaw, rotation angle around the Z
The InvenSense MPU6050 sensor, which is a MEMS six-axis
axis. The spatial arbitrary posture of the current equipment can
capacitive accelerometer, is selected as motion processing unit,
be expressed accurately by these three angles. The process of
and its functional blocks are showed in Fig. 3. It contains an
data fusion algorithm is illustrated in Fig. 5.
embedded a 3-axis MEMS gyroscope, a 3-axis MEMS accel-
The tilt angle data can be obtained by using the original data
erometer, and a Digital Motion Processor (DMP) hardware
of six axes with data fusion algorithm [14]. The InvenSense
accelerator engine that is capable of processing complex 6-axis
Company provides an embedded motion driver for the DMP
sensor fusion algorithms. The MPU6050 sensor features three
hardware of MPU6050. Then 6-axis quaternions from the DMP
16-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for digitizing the
can be directly generated by the embedded motion driver. After
gyroscope outputs and three 16-bit ADCs for digitizing the
getting the quaternions, the tilt angles can be calculated by the
accelerometer outputs. In MPU6050, the minimum resolution
following conversion equations,
of tri-axis gyroscope is 131LSB/ (°/s), and the minimum reso-

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Three Axises
Gyroscope
Angular Velocity Quaternion to
Tilt Angle
MPU-6050 Data Fusion Attitude Angle
Three Axises Conversion
Accelerometer
Acceleration
Fig. 5. Data fusion algorithm flow diagram.

Sensor MCU ZigBee Wireless Impedance Matching

Antenna
Module (8051 kernel ) Transceiver Module Network

Power Supply Module

Fig. 6. The structure of sensor data acquisition node.

𝜑 arctan2(2(𝑤𝑥 + 𝑦𝑧), 1 − 2(𝑥 2 + 𝑦 2 )) electric power for the wireless node. The designed ZigBee
[𝜃] = [ arcsin(2(𝑤𝑦 − 𝑧𝑥)) ] (1) experimental node is shown in Fig. 7.
𝜓 2
arctan2(2(𝑤𝑧 + 𝑥𝑦), 1 − 2(𝑦 + 𝑧 2 ))

where 𝑤, 𝑥, 𝑦, and 𝑧 represent quaternions, and 𝜑, 𝜃, and 𝜓

represent roll, pitch and yaw, respectively. Then, the stability Antenna

data of the equipment condition can be obtained according to

Network
the change of each angle at different time. connection
2) The Structure of Wireless Sensor Node indicator light

Sensor data acquisition node is the basic element of wireless Impedance Matching Networking

data acquisition network, namely ZigBee sensor end device. A
lot of nodes that distribute in different parts of the equipment
under test can accomplish the function of multi point data ac-
quisition. Here, the structure of sensor data acquisition node is
designed by integrating sensor module, MCU, ZigBee wireless
transceiver module, and power supply module, etc. The hard-
ware structure is shown in Fig. 6.
The sensor module MPU-6050 mainly consists of 6-axis
MEMS motion sensor, and the sensor data is given in the form
of 3-axis acceleration data and 3-axis gyroscope data. Then the
tilt angles are obtained through the data fusion algorithm. For
the MCU and ZigBee wireless transceiver module, the ZigBee
controlling and radio frequency integrated chip CC2530F256
are used to realize the sensor data reading and ZigBee network
joining. The CC2530F256 is a powerful and high-performance
on-chip solution for 2.4GHz, IEEE802.15.4 and ZigBee ap-
plications [15]. In the sensor node, CC2530 controls the pulse
signal to read the acceleration sensor data through the I2 C
interface (SDA and SCL), and calculate the tilt angle of
equipment. For a wireless sensor, energy is usually provided
from solar power, structure vibration, chemical batteries or
lithium batteries. In this study, during the experimental test
phase, a lithium polymer battery is adopted, and provides
electric power for the sensor module and the MCU and ZigBee
wireless transceiver module. The power supply module that is
made up of lithium battery and voltage regulation circuit pro-
vides stabilized voltage support for the whole node. Recently,
with the sustainable development of the solar charging tech-
nology, the solar panels are applied in the WSN, and provide
CC2530 Microprocessor
Low Dropout Voltage Regulator
MPU6050 Motion Processing
Sensor
Lithium Metal Battery Reset Power Switch
Fig. 7. ZigBee experimental node.
B. Development of WSN
ZigBee wireless control transceiver module is responsible
for sensor data read and preprocessing, and also has wireless
networking capabilities. As a result, the data package is carried
forward according to the protocol provisions of the ZigBee
wireless network. Z-Stack is a complete ZigBee protocol stack
and application development solution that is distributed by TI
Corporation and conforms to the ZigBee Alliance standard. In
this protocol stack, Z-Stack helps developers to achieve most of
the ZigBee protocol content. Therefore, for the application
development based on ZigBee protocol stack, the researchers
do not need to repeatedly develop ZigBee protocol when de-
signing huge data communication management system, and
just develop the application framework provided by Z-Stack
[16]. By calling the application interface function provided by
Z-Stack and modifying the device configuration information,
the implementation of the wireless network node with custom
function is completed. In the Z-Stack protocol stack, the de-
vices in the network are divided into three categories.ZigBee
Coordinator: The device is responsible for starting the IEEE
802.15.4 network and serves as a personal area network (PAN)
coordinator in this network. ZigBee Router: The device can
join an existing network and connect with a coordinator or
other routers, as well as allow other devices to connect with the

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device, in the network responsible for routing packets. ZigBee
End Device: The device can join an existing network and
connect with a coordinator or other routers.
In the wireless data acquisition node, the wireless module
belongs to the ZigBee End Device, while the ZigBee wireless
module in the data processing and monitoring terminal belongs
to the ZigBee Coordinator device. A coordinator node can
connect with the terminal device at the same time, and it can
constitute the topology network. There are three common to-
pologies: star topology, tree topology and mesh topology, re-
spectively, as shown in Fig. 8. Due to outdoor advertising
equipment area limitations, the star network topology can meet
the requirement of the wireless network coverage. So, for
ZigBee node devices, only the Coordinator and End Devices
are needed in this system. The star topology has been shown in
Fig. 8.
Each sensor node sends the collected data to the coordinator
module by wireless network mode. Then the data communica-
tion is realized between the coordinator and the ARM CPU by
using UART interface. The embedded Linux operating system
runs on the ARM CPU, and a GUI application designed by the
C++ programming language and Qt development framework is
used to complete the functions, which includes monitoring data
receiving and processing, real-time data display, historical data
query and statistics, data analysis and early warning, infor-
mation management and remote communication, and so on.
The GPRS module can be connected with the internet similar to
the mobile phone communication. The monitoring data will be
sent to the specified remote server via the internet. In addition,
the LCD touch screen provides a convenience to display data
and waveform curve, set the related parameters, and switch
function. All historical data is stored in a local database with
SQLite and synchronized with the cloud. The hardware plat-
form and user interface of monitoring platform used in this
study are shown in Fig. 10 and Fig. 11, respectively.

Coordinator Router End Device

Star Topology Tree Topology Mesh Topology LCD Touch Screen

Fig. 8. Topology structure of ZigBee WSN.

After the node is powered on, each hardware device and

protocol stack program must be initialized, and then the OSAL ZigBee Coordinator
system is executed. OSAL, also known as the operating system
abstraction layer, is a management mechanism for mul-
ti-tasking system resource defined by Z-Stack to achieve a
GPRS/GSM Module ARM Core-board
similar operating system management functions. The system
uses polling to work. According to the priority of the task query, Fig. 10. Embedded monitoring experimental platform.

if the task needs to be executed, call the task of the sub-function.

If not, continue to query, and finally continue to the cycle. The
tasks of user-defined application layer are also added to the task
queue.
C. Monitoring Center Design
The monitoring platform adopts the ARM core-based mi-
croprocessor S3C2440 as the master control chip. Hardware
setup comprises ARM core-board, power circuit, LCD touch
screen interface circuit, UART interface circuit, coordinator
module, and GPRS module, etc. Its structure diagram is shown
in Fig. 9.
Fig. 11. Embedded platform system interface.
LCD Touch Screen
Coordinator
D. Sensor Nodes Layout and System Implementation
S3C2440
Multiple wireless nodes of sensor end device are installed on
GPRS Module UART Power Module
(ARM Core-board) the main loading points of steel structure behind the advertising
boards. The number of nodes depends on the size and structure
Fig. 9. Hardware structure of the monitoring platform. of the advertising board. The ZigBee wireless network can
support 65535 nodes theoretically. Therefore, people don’t
need to worry about the limited number of nodes in practice.

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Importantly, both the coordinator node and the embedded
monitoring platform need uninterrupted power supply, and they
cannot be far away from the advertising board. Hence, they
should be set in the nearby equipment box for convenient
maintenance and debugging. Generally, all data is transferred
to the cloud server by GPRS module simultaneously. When
some abnormal situations occur, the monitoring platform will
send early warning information via Short Messaging Service
(SMS) and Cloud Report Service (CRS) to the manager. SMS is
one of the most popular short message services now and can
meet the requirements of information transmission of detection
system, and it is easy to implement and low cost. Layout dia-
gram is shown in Fig. 12.
Sensor end-device node
Coordinator node
The back of The Internet cloud
advertisement board
GPRS module
Embedded Monitoring platform
Fig. 12. Monitoring system layout.
V. MODEL SIMULATION AND ALGORITHM DESIGN
A. The Outdoor Advertising Board Model Setup and Simula-
tion Analysis
Billboard
120o
(a) (b)
Fig. 13. (a) Billboard elevation; (b) Top view.
According to the different forms of outdoor billboards and
load conditions, many researchers have established the corre-
sponding mathematical model for analysis. One of the most
widely studied models is the wind load response model [17].
The load of horizontal wind is the main one that the billboard
structure needs to bear. And the strength of wind resistance is
the key to the safety and stability of the billboard. Due to the
large number of outdoor billboards, this study selects a
three-sided independent column billboard as a research object.
The structure of the diagram is shown in Fig. 13.
𝜔𝑘 = 𝛽𝑧 𝜇𝑠 𝜇𝑧 𝜔𝑜 (2)
2
where 𝜔0 is the basic wind pressure (kN/m ), 𝜇𝑠 and 𝜇𝑧 represent
the wind load shape factor and wind pressure height coefficient
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at the height(z), respectively, 𝛽𝑧 is the wind-induced vibration
coefficient at the height(z).
Furthermore, the modeling and analysis by finite element
method are carried out based on SAP2000 spatial structure.
According to simulation, a reasonable method for judging the
dumping of outdoors billboards and the proper arrangement of
sensor nodes can be realized. In SAP2000, a model needs to be
built first, the object of which should be the same as the actual
component parameters. After building the model, the load
condition combination is defined accompanied by the con-
straints.
The analysis results can be got after the operation of struc-
tural analysis [18]. The results of the load applied to the ad-
vertising model are shown in Fig. 14.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 14. Simulation model analysis: (a) outdoor advertising board module;
(b) deformed shape under wind load.
It can be analyzed that, under the action of the standard
horizontal wind load, the billboard downwind displacement is
incremented from bottom to top, from the table above. The
deformation at the top of the billboard is the biggest. If the
deformation is greater than that, the deformation of the bill-
board will be more than the design of the safety range, which
may cause a great security risk.
As shown in Fig. 15, the maximal displacement is about 90
cm, at the vertex, and the minimum is about 26 cm. The height
of the billboard is 11.40 m tall from the bottom to the top of the
column. The approximate range of inclination can be estimated
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by the arctangent function. The maximum and minimum esti-
mates of the top tilt angle are arctan(0.9/5) = 10.2° and
arctan(0.26/5) = 2.98°, respectively.
Fig.15. Model node displacement data table.
B. Predictive Analytic Algorithms
For safety monitoring of the outdoor advertising board，the
monitoring data are huge with strong continuity and difficulty
in function representations. Time series analysis provides an
effective method for the analysis of dynamic data. It is a branch
of statistics and widely used in trend prediction [19]. By time
series analysis, we build models to describe the states of the
outdoor advertising board and extract information from the
dynamic data, as well as construct feature vectors for the dis-
crimination.
In this paper, exponential smoothing model was used to de-
scribe the development trend of the monitoring data. The dou-
ble exponential smoothing of sequence (Y) is defined by the
recursive form as followed:
(1)
𝑆𝑡 = 𝛼𝑌𝑡 + (1 − 𝛼)𝑆𝑡−1
(1)
{ (2) (1) (2)
𝑆𝑡 = 𝛼𝑆𝑡 + (1 − 𝛼)𝑆𝑡−1
(1) (2)
where 𝑆𝑡 and 𝑆𝑡 represent the single and double exponen-
tial smoothing value at epoch 𝑡, respectively, while 𝑌𝑡 repre-
sents the metrical data value. And 𝛼 is the smoothing constant
in the range of 0 < 𝛼 < 1. The prediction model is built as
followed:
𝐹𝑡+𝑇 = 𝑀𝑡 + 𝑁𝑡 𝑇
where 𝐹𝑡+𝑇 is the prediction value at epoch 𝑡 + 𝑇 . 𝑇 is the
predictive period. 𝑀𝑡 and 𝑁𝑡 are the model parameters, ex-
pressed by:
(1) (2)
𝑀𝑡 = 2𝑆𝑡 − 𝑆𝑡
𝛼
𝑁𝑡 = (1) (2)
(1−𝛼)(𝑆𝑡 −𝑆𝑡 )
respectively.
A reasonable smoothing constant α should be chosen based
on an appropriate evaluation criterion. The method is to cal-
culate the smoothing sequences corresponding to the plurality
of smoothing constants α first, and then calculate the mean
square error (MSE) or the average absolute error (MAD). The
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7
smoothing constant corresponds to the minimum of MSE or
MAD and its predicted value is the most reasonable.
C. Early Warning Judgment Standard
For the dangerous situations that may happen on the outdoor
billboard equipment, the system mainly considers the following
three cases:
1. The role of strong external load, such as typhoons, snow,
earthquakes, etc., can cause a sudden deformation of the bill-
board structure. Specifically, the monitoring angle value
changes greatly in a short time.
2. The joint parts of billboard steel structure are loosing,
which is usually caused by loosening or disordering of the bolts
at the structural connections. In addition, the structural joints of
the corrosion fracture also have the structural instability, such
as the instable monitoring angle, variation of the frequency and
increased amplitude.
3. The billboards keep tilting in one direction. When the an-
gle is becoming larger, the tilt will exceed the security limits,
indicating that the deformation even the billboard collapse is
happening due to the structural imbalance.
The acquisition of the initial data is carried out after the in-
stallation of the monitoring system. Then the system collects
the first 20 sets of data continuously, and calculates the arith-
metic mean and standard error of the group. If the standard
error data is less than 1, then reset the arithmetic mean of 20
sets of data as the initial state of the billboard. This status will
be updated after each billboard maintenance.
After the status of billboard is initialized, the data is pro-
cessed as followed:
1. Threshold judgment. Firstly, determine whether the col-
lected data is below the security threshold or not. The safety
threshold depends on the design criteria of the billboard or the
(3) model simulation analysis, or the historical extreme value of
the monitoring data over a certain period of time. As one ex-
ample in this paper, the billboard is judged to be stable when
the inclination is smaller than 3 degrees, and if the data is larger
than the threshold of 10 degrees, the billboard may be abnormal
or the node is constructed abnormally.
2. Difference judgment. By comparing the collected data
(4) with the previous received one, if the inclination change is
greater than 3 degrees, judge that the billboard is abnormal, and
maybe possibly suffering from the strong external load, and at
the same time if the cumulative change between the received
(5) and initial data of the billboard’s state is greater than 5 degrees,
(6) the billboard is tilting in a certain direction.
3. Predictive model evaluation. This step uses the exponen-
tial smoothing model built previously to calculate a predicted
value based on the historical data, and then compares it with the
true value. The error value should not exceed triple of the
standard error.
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VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION and the measured angle of inclinometer is as the true one. The
A. Outdoor Field Test angle ranges from 0 to 30 degrees, which covers the safe tilt
angle of the advertising boards. Since the sensor nodes are
Outdoor field test is necessary. Verification of the wireless
placed horizontally, the measured values are 0. Then they are
communication stability in an outdoor advertising board envi-
tilted in the range of 0 to 3021degrees. The measured values are
ronment is one of the main objectives of the test and the sensors
compared with the readings 20.9 of the inclinometer. The meas-
and software program stability test is another objective.
urement results are shown in 20.8Fig. 17.
The install locations of the sensors are shown in Fig. 16(a).
20.7
The red mark is marked as the position of the sensor node. The Testing Accuracy Curve
30 20.6
monitoring platform is located at the bottom of the advertising Standard Angle
20.5
column for easy observation by the operator as showed in Fig. 25
Measured Angle
标题
20.4
16(b).
20 20.3
Sensor node
20.2

Angle ( )
ZigBee
network 15 20.1

20
10 10 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 10 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 10

(a)
Internet
Zigbee
GPRS
Monitoring platform display
(b)
Fig. 16. Outdoor field test. (a) Sensor node placement; (b) Monitoring
platform.
For the different building materials properties (such as steel,
aluminum), the corresponding algorithm needs to be adjusted
accordingly, in order to accurately determine the threat of
billboard tilt. According to the above simulation results, the
algorithm used in this experiment is suitable for steel material.
B. Sensor Node Performance Test
In order to ensure that the system can correctly determine the
safety and stability of the equipment, we must first ensure the
accuracy of the collected sensor data. The error cannot exceed
the minimum specified by the standard. Otherwise, it will make
an error of judgment.
This test uses the value measured by the standard inclinom-
eter as the reference one. The fixed plane of the different in-
clination angles and the inclination of the sensor nodes are
measured by the inclinometer and sensor nodes, respectively,
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Test Number
Fig. 17. The comparison of measured angle and standard angle.
It can be seen that the absolute error of the measured value of
the sensor is within 0.3 degrees and the relative error is about
1.5% between 0 and 30 degrees. For outdoor billboard moni-
toring, 0.3 degrees of error is within the acceptable limit of the
system and meets the requirement of the measurement.
C. Sensor Node Power Consumption Test
As the sensor nodes use lithium battery as the power supply,
their power dissipation should be low enough so that they can
work stably for a long time without supplementing additional
power frequently. The sensor node operates in active mode
when there is data to be sent out, and it switches to PM2 low
power sleep mode when there is no data transmission. And the
working time is estimated by measuring the current. The ex-
perimental results show that the current of the sensor node
always changes during the data transmission and reception. The
maximum of instantaneous current is 28.84 mA and the work-
ing current of the sensor node is 0.78 mA when no data is sent.
Hence, the operating and sleep current is calculated at a max-
imum of 30 and 1 mA, respectively. The sensor node is set to
collect data once per hour. Each collection needs 100 s, and
then the sensor sleeps for 500 s. As a result, the power con-
sumption of the sensor one day is 300×100×24/3600 +
1×500×24.3600 = 23.333 mAh.
If the capacity of one lithium battery is 1500 mAh, the sensor
nodes can work for about 64 days, that is, two months. Thus,
the sensor nodes can meet the requirements of low power
consumption. Moreover, the integration of solar modules into
the sensor system can be employed to achieve less or even no
maintenances.

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D. WSN Data Transmission Experiment odically, and calculates the packet loss rate by the number of
In order to facilitate the observation and debugging, during packets received. Repeated experiments show that the packet
the network testing, the coordinator is connected with the PC loss rate is less than 5%. Therefore, the performance of the
serial port via the experimental development board, and then wireless data transmission is stable and reliable for the moni-
the data received by the coordinator is sent to the serial de- toring system.
bugging assistant via serial communication. The test environ- E. System Early Warning Test
ment is shown in Fig. 18.
For the dangerous situations, the safety monitoring system
has three early warning mechanisms: buzzer warning, SMS
1.The serial assistant
received the data to warning and early warning of data center news. The system
prove that the network
was successful
Serial debugging assistant composition is shown in Fig. 19. The buzzer warning is carried
2. The network indicator
lights together to prove
out by the terminal of field data processing. There is a warning
that the connection is
established
sound to remind the pedestrians to stay away when a dumping
Coordinator test
board danger occurs. SMS warning is achieved by the SMS function
of GPRS module. When the system detects an abnormal situa-
tion it immediately sends warning message to the preset man-
The serial cable is
connected to the PC agers’ phones, reminding them to rush to the security scene.
Sensor data acquisition node The message of data center informs the user of the abnormal
situation through the popup warning window. The analysis of
Fig. 18. Networking test. the early warning judgment finds out the origin of the failure
The networking is proved to be successful by either the and possible reasons. The test experiments demonstrate that the
flashing and lighting of the network indicator of the coordinator early warning mechanism can give the alarm accurately when
and sensor node or the reception of sensor data by the serial the abnormal data meets the set early warning criteria.
debugging assistant. The distance between the sensor and the
coordinator can be increased by changing the position of the
sensor node. By observing whether the networking is success-
ful or not, the actual communication distance is determined.
The sending period of the experiment acquisition node is 1 s, Server Software
Wireless Sensor Node
and the transmission power is modified to the maximum 4.5
dBm.
Test experiments show that the communication distance is
up to 150 m in the open outdoor playground environment, while
it can reach 80 m in dense multipath indoor environment. If the
coordinator is too far away from the end device, the phenom-
enon of packet loss will appear. Actually, the 50m distance of
communication is enough, and the network meets the re- Monitoring Platform
quirements of the system monitoring.
TABLE 1. Fig. 19. Demo of the system composition.
WIRELESS COMMUNICATION TEST
Received Ideal Packet
No. Sensor Location
Packet Packet Loss Rate
VII. CONCLUSIONS
Tilt Upper left In this paper, a WSN monitoring system based on ZigBee
1 1043 1200 4.75%
sensor corner
Tilt Upper right and MEMS sensor for the large outdoor advertising boards is
2 1147 1200 4.42%
sensor corner designed. In the system, multiple 6-axis MEMS sensors are
Tilt Bottom left
3 1154 1200 3.83% placed around the key load points on the large outdoor adver-
sensor corner
Tilt Bottom tising board, and they all report to a single node called coor-
4 1161 1200 3.25%
sensor right corner dinator. At each sensor node, a data fusion algorithm based on
the measured data is used to obtain accurate and stable tilt angle.
In the Field test, there were some packet losses during data The ZigBee network between the sensor nodes and coordinator
transfer but they did not affect measurement of the billboard allows the system to operate with low power dissipation.
inclination and alerting against potential dangers because in- Eventually, the embedded monitoring platform judges the state
complete packets are filtered at the server side. Wireless of the boards and generates early warning with the help of
communication test result is showed in Table 1. The sensor predictive analytics algorithm. In the experiments, both the
node sends 1200 packets of 10 bytes to the coordinator peri-

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[10] S. Mirshahi, A. Akbari, and S. Uysal, “Implementation of structural data fusion, structural health monitoring,
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1558-1748 (c) 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JSEN.2017.2770324, IEEE Sensors
Journal
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zhou, China. His current research research interests include

interconnect design and simulation, carbon nanoelectronics,
and Multiphysics simulation.

Kuiwen Xu received the B.E. degree from

Hangzhou Dianzi University, and the Ph.D.
degree from Zhejiang University, Hang-
zhou, China, in 2009 and 2014, respec-
tively. He was a Visiting Ph.D. Student
with the National University of Singapore,
Singapore, from 2012 to 2013.
From 2014 to 2015, he was a senior re-
searcher with Huawei Technologies Co.
Ltd. He is currently an Associate Professor
with Hangzhou Dianzi University. His research interests in-
clude antenna design, microwave measurement and electro-
magnetic inverse scattering problems.

Gaofeng Wang (S’93-M’95-SM’01) re-

ceived the Ph.D. degree in electrical engi-
neering from University of Wiscon-
sin-Milwaukee, WI, USA, in 1993, and the
Ph.D. degree in scientific computing from
Stanford University, CA, USA, in 2001.
He was a Scientist with Tanner Re-
search Inc., Pasadena, CA, USA, from
1993 to 1996. He was a Principal Re-
searcher and Development Engineering with Synopsys Inc.,
Mountain View, CA, from 1996 to 2001. In 1999, he served as
a Consultant with Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. He was
the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Intpax, Inc., San Jose,
CA, UAS, from 2001 to 2003. He was the CTO of Siargo Inc.,
Santo Clara, CA, USA, from 2004 to 2010. He was a Professor
and the Head of CJ Huang Information Technology Research
Institute with Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, from 2004 to
2013. He was a Chief Scientist with Lorentz Solution, Inc.,
Santa Clara, CA, USA, from 2010 to 2013. He is currently a
Distinguished Professor with Hangzhou Dianzi University,
Hangzhou, China. He has over 160 journal articles and holes 22
patents. His current research interests include integrated circuit
and microelectromechanical system design and simulation,
computational electromagnetics, electronic design automation,
and wavelet applications in engineering.

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