Guided Wave Based Acoustic Communications

in Structural Health Monitoring Systems

in the Presence of Structural Defects
Christian Kexel, Moritz Mälzer and Jochen Moll
Department of Physics
Goethe University
60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Email: christian.kexel@physik.uni-frankfurt.de

Abstract—In this paper, we demonstrate a numerical as well

as an experimental proof of concept for digital wireless com-
munication in damaged plate-like structures using ultrasonic
guided waves. The feasibility of a simple on-off keying modu-
lation scheme is shown which does not require advanced signal
processing even though multiple wave modes are present. First,
a simulation study aims at investigating multibit communication
over an isotropic aluminum plate in the presence of a notch-
type defect. Furthermore, we conduct an experimental study in
which we observe communication for severe cut-like damages.
The presented data communication scheme might be utilized in
future structural health monitoring systems which may provide
at the same time both data communication as well as the detection
of defects.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Ultrasonic guided waves (GWs) have been widely used in
structural health monitoring systems [1]. Of particular interest
is here the GW ability to interact sensitively with different
types of damage inside the structure (e.g. delaminations) as
well as on the surface (e.g. corrosion damage or surface
cracks). Another attractive feature of GW is their ability to
travel long distances and thus to monitor large areas.
The focus of the present paper is to investigate the data
communication capabilities of GW as illustrated in Fig. 1.
Therefore, multiple active sensor nodes are supposed to be
arranged in a distributed network. Besides their well-known
damage detection capability [2] it is possible to share infor-
mation about the damage, e.g. in terms of a damage indicator,
over the acoustic waveguide using data communication tech-
niques (new and to be investigated). Only few works have
been published on acoustic data communication using GW
so far: Time reversal pulse position modulation (TR-PPM)
was demonstrated in [3] for data communication in isotropic
materials that can eliminate the effect of multiple wave modes
and frequency dispersion. GW-based acoustic communication
has also been performed in a corrosion resistant multi-wire
cable [4]. Ultrasound communication for elastic waves by
means of chirp-on-off keying has been proposed in [5]. More
recently, CDMA-like acoustic data communication has been
presented in [6], [7].
Fig. 1. Schematic showing the data communication in a multi-sensor
network for SHM systems that consists of multiple actuators and sensors
that communicate with each other and a base station. The power supply of
the sensor nodes is provided in this schematic by acoustic power transmission.
The novelty of this paper consists in the analysis of GW-
based data communication in the presence of structural de-
fects. Therefore, a novel signal modulation and demodulation
approach is presented in Section 2 that enables high data-rates
in the presence of multiple wave modes and does not require
advanced signal processing, such as dispersion compensation.
Section 3 presents a numerical model to study the performance
of acoustic data communication in the presence of a notch
in the acoustic waveguide. On top of that, results of an
experimental study on an isotropic plate with cuts of different
lengths are presented in Section 4 that verifies the feasibility
of our approach. Finally, conclusions are drawn at the end.
II. S IGNAL MODULATION AND DEMODULATION
The proposed data communication concept, as outlined
below, is related to features from time-reversal data communi-
cation, because a channel model is measured uniquely for each
actuator sensor pair and used during the reconstruction of the
bit information. However, no reversing in time is needed to
achieve this goal. Moreover, our approach uses features from
on-off-keying to encode the bit information in the presence of
ones and zeros in the signal.
The communication concept comprises the five steps:

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 1) Send a signal corresponding to a digital one to measure
the impulse response of the acoustic channel at the
receiver. In the present study we use a Hann-windowed
tone-burst with only one cycle, which leads to multi-
modal dispersive wave propagation.
2) Transmit a multibit sequence consisting of ones and
zeros, and measure the signal response at the receiver.
3) Perform a matched filter between the acoustic channel
and the current signal which leads to several peaks in
the cross-correlation function, corresponding to a digital
one. In a next step, compute the envelope of the signal.
4) Identify the peaks in the signal and thereby detect also
empty signal regions that correspond to a digitial zero.
For peak picking simple thresholding was used, but more
sophisticated algorithms can be employed if needed.
5) Reconstruct the original bit sequence at the receiver. Fig. 3. Simulated time-domain signals for different exemplary depths of the
notch damage. At the utilized frequency of 120 kHz both the A0 as well as
S0 mode are excited.
III. N UMERICAL M ODEL
Our experimental investigations of acoustic communication
with guided waves are complemented by numerical simu-
lations. Especially the finite element method [8] represents In our numerical study, a Hann-windowed toneburst of
a mature framework for simulating the structural dynamics only one cycle duration is considered that leads to a highly
of complex geometries. However, it is rather demanding dispersive broadband pulse, particularly for the A0-mode.
computationally. In order to reduce the computational bur- Fig. 3 shows the received multimodal signal resulting from
den, we here restrict ourselves to solely two dimensions, the excitation with a carrier frequency of f = 120 kHz. The
which is a commonly employed approach [1]. A schematic signal which is obtained with the undamaged specimen (depth
of the investigated structural geometry is depicted in Fig 2. 0.0 mm, blue solid line) is hereafter used as reference in the
It comprises a piezoelectric transmitter and receiver (10 mm matched filter for the bit-sequence reconstruction. Increasing
x 0.2 mm, mutual distance 250 mm) with adhesive (10 mm x the damage depth in our numerical experiment clearly leads
0.1 mm) atop a plate (thickness 2 mm) having a rectangular to a deformation of the waveform, where the S0 and A0 mode
notch-type damage (width 0.1 mm). Different depths of the are affected differently by introduction of the notch damage.
notch are studied hereafter. The plate is treated as an infinite
So as to transmit data over the acoustic channel, at the
medium in order to avoid reflections at its boundaries. The
beginning of a multibit sequence a burst is excited (digital one)
material parameters for the isotropic aluminum plate as well as
and then each further bit (one or zero) is sent after a duration
the piezoelectric transducers (PIC255) with epoxy resin glue
of one cycle (T = 1/f ). The measured time-domain signal
are taken from Ref. [9]. In summary, our simulation model
corresponding to a digital multibit sequence is hence given by
includes the application of voltage tonebursts, the inverse
the superposition of time-shifted single-bit signals. The choice
piezoelectric effect in the transmitter, propagation of the elastic
of aforementioned clock in our study is arbitrary and might
wave, wave-damage interaction as well as the piezoelectric
be subject to optimization efforts in future investigations.
response of the receiving sensor.
So as to carry out the calculations the Comsol Multiphysics In Fig. 4 the matched filter response of the multibit sequence
software package is employed [10]. The structure is discretized 10101010 is depicted where the clock duration is indicated
using quadrilateral mesh elements with a size ranging between by vertical lines and each digital one is highlighted by an
0.1 mm and 4 mm. The implicit generalized α time-stepping asterisk. In the top part of Fig. 4 cases of the undamaged
method with α  1 and equidistant integration steps (over- plate at different frequencies are studied (therefore time on
sampling factor 16) is used. The PARDISO solver [11] has the horizontal axis is normalized to clock periods). The more
been chosen within this numerical setup. intricate signal at f = 120 kHz (both S0 and A0 mode
are excited) yields accordingly shoulders (local maxima) in
the filter response. However, classification of either a digital
zero or a digital one in each clock period can easily be
accomplished by simple schemes, such as thresholding.
In the bottom part of Fig. 4 simulation results of the matched
filter response for increasing notch depth is shown. Even in the
case of a severe damage, the bit-sequence can be reconstructed
Fig. 2. Schematic of the 2D numerical setup. successfully.

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Fig. 4. (top) Envelope of the simulated matched filter response of the
sequence 10101010 at different frequencies for the undamaged plate. The
digital information can be recovered, however with decreasing quality for
the multimodal signal at 120 kHz; (bottom) Amplitude of the matched filter
envelope for excitation frequency of 120 kHz and varying depth of the notch.
The communication link shows persisting robustness with increasing severity
of the damage.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
Fig. 5 shows a photo of the experimental setup used in
the present study. Two circular piezoelectric transducers (PIC
255) with a diameter of 10 mm and a thickness of 0.2 mm are
placed in the middle of an aluminium plate with the dimen-
sions 1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1.5 mm. The transducers have a
frequency tuning curve with a minimum S0-mode excitation
at 40 kHz (purely A0-mode excitation) and a minimum A0-
mode excitation at 200 kHz (purely S0-mode excitation) [12].
Usually the excitation is done at those frequencies to reduce
signal complexity and to simplify signal analysis.
Fig. 5. Photo of the experimental setup showing the position of the actuator
and sensor (only the rightmost and the leftmost are used in this experiment),
and the position of the damage.
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undamaged 50mm 100mm
25mm 75mm 200mm
15
0
-15
15
0
-15
Amplitude (mV)
15
0
-15
15
0
-15
15
0
-15
15
0
-15
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
Time (ms)
Fig. 6. Time-domain signals for different damage states.
In this study we intentionally operate at 120 kHz to demon-
strate wireless acoustic communication when both fundamen-
tal wave modes propagate in the structure simultaneously. To
make the scenario even more complex, we used a single-cycle
Hann-windowed toneburst which induces a broadband signal
that leads to significant dispersion especially of the A0-mode.
After characterizing the impulse response of the undamaged
structure, a damage in form of a cut is introduced in the
direct path between the transducers. Its position is exactly in
the middle of the transducer pair and the damage is oriented
symmetrically with respect to the direct path.
A significant change in the waveforms can be detected due
to the impact of the damage as shown in Fig. 6. This plot
depicts seven pitch case signals representing different damage
states. Besides a drop in amplitude of both fundamental wave
modes, a phase change can be observed that corresponds to
the increased propagation time caused by the damage.
The top part of Fig. 7 presents the matched filter response of
the multibit sequence 10001101000111110100 for which the
reference signal of the matched filter is the impulse response of
the undamaged specimen. This means that the reference is not
updated as the damage is introduced. The digital information
can be recovered in case of the damaged specimen, but a
significant drop in amplitude occurs with increasing damage
size. The bottom part of the same figure demonstrates that
the amplitude of the matched filter increases again when the
reference signal is updated by a new impulse response function
of the damaged structure. Even in the case of a very large
damage, the digital information can be recovered successfully.
The data rate in this case is 120 kbit/s.
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper demonstrates successfully the data communica-
tion capabilities of ultrasonic GW in a dispersive isotropic
waveguide. Results from a numerical finite element model
and experiments are presented and discussed. Data rates of
120 kbits/s could be achieved. Future work will investigate
the acoustic communication link in more complex structures,
such as composite as well as sandwich structures, and study
performance measures of the channel, e.g. bit-error rates.
 undamaged 25mm 200mm [6] J. Moll, L. De Marchi, and A. Marzani, “Transducer-to-Transducer Com-
0.9 munication in Guided Wave Based Structural Health Monitoring,” in
0.8 19th World Conference on Non-Destructive Testing, Munich, Germany,
2016, pp. 1–8.
0.7
[7] J. Moll, M. Mälzer, L. De Marchi, N. Testoni, and A. Marzani,
matched fi lter (arb.u.)

0.6 “Experimental Analysis of Digital Data Communication in Intelligent

0.5
Structures Using Lamb Waves,” in 11th International Workshop on
Structural Health Monitoring (Stanford, USA), 2017, pp. 1654–1661.
0.4 [8] O. Zienkiewicz, R. Taylor, and J. Zhu, Finite Element Method: Its Basis
0.3 and Fundamentals. Elsevier, 2013.
[9] I. Mueller, “Inspection of piezoelectric transducers used for structural
0.2
health monitoring systems,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Siegen,
0.1 Germany, 2017.
0 [10] COMSOL, AB: COMSOL Multiphysics (version 5.3). Stockholm,
-0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 Sweden, 2017.
Time (ms) [11] C. G. Petra, O. Schenk, M. Lubin, and K. Gärtner, “An augmented
incomplete factorization approach for computing the schur complement
undamaged 25mm 200mm
in stochastic optimization,” SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing,
0.9
vol. 36, no. 2, pp. C139–C162, 2014.
0.8 [12] J. Moll and C.-P. Fritzen, “Advanced Aspects of Mode-selective Ex-
0.7 citation of Ultrasonic Guided Waves, 24th Conference on Noise and
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Vibration Engineering,” in 24th International Conference on Noise and

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Vibration Engineering, Leuven, Belgium, 2010.
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16
Time (ms)

Fig. 7. (top) Envelope of the matched filter response of the multibit sequence
10001101000111110100 when the reference signal for the matched filter
computation is always the impulse response of the undamaged specimen. The
digital information can be recovered in case of the damaged specimen, but
a significant drop in amplitude occurs with increasing damage size; (bottom)
The amplitude of the matched filter envelope increases again when the
reference signal is updated by a new impulse response function of the damaged
structure. This proves the robustness of the acoustic data communication link.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge support by the German Research
Foundation through the AcoComm project (grant 349435502).

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