Airport pavement responses obtained from wireless sensing network upon digital signal processing

The intelligent measurement-based technology of Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor was proposed for establishing a wireless sensing network of airport asphalt pavement for structural information monitoring at Chongqing International Airport. Given the complicated natural environment and aircraft loadings, obtaining key information (i.e. dynamic response amplitude, duration and distribution, aircraft driving offset, speed, etc.) from the monitoring database is a crucial prerequisite to analyse pavement performance. Moving average filter and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) filter were utilised to process and acquire vital dynamic responses information. The interval of the wandering determination sensors within the aircraft loading determination matrix was discussed and designed based on signal sampling theorem and three-dimensional finite element analysis. The batch program for aircraft taxiing speed calculation was compiled upon signal correlation method which was compared and verified using time difference method. Results show that the allowed interval of the wandering determination sensors is related to the aircraft gear sizes and sensor sizes simultaneously. The computed taxiing speeds using signal correlation method, which reveals higher calculation efficiency, are in good agreement with the results that employ the time difference method. The duration of dynamic response of aircraft shows an inverse proportional relationship with speed, while the forward and backward propagation distances of stress and strain are irrelevant to speed. Once the monitoring system could integrate all critical features, it becomes more useful for pavement health monitoring.