Development of a Cost-Effective Wireless Vibration Weigh-In-Motion System to Estimate Axle Weights of Trucks

Pavement Performance Assessment Using a Cost-Effective Wireless Accelerometer System

Truck weight data is used in many areas of transportation such as weight enforcement and pavement condition assessment. This study describes a wireless sensor network (WSN) that estimates the weight of moving vehicles from the pavement vibrations caused by vehicular motion.The system has four arrays of accelerometer sensors to measure pavement vibration, and interspersed magnetometer sensors to measure speed.  Sensor output is wirelessly sent to a server, where it is processed to classify vehicles and estimate axle load. 
Different states have different requirements for WIM but the developed system outperformed the nearby conventional WIM, and passes most of the commonly used standards in United States. The system also opens up exciting new opportunities for WSNs in pavement engineering and intelligent transportation.

Sensor cube assembly (left), package (middle), and installation (right).

Top plot shows the raw acceleration signal measured by the reference sensor. Bottom plot shows the average pavement response and the fitted response.
Comparison of LTPP error by our system with a nearby conventional WIM. The errors for the nearby WIM are much higher than the errors allowed by the LTPP standard.
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