Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184

www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Detecting bridge dynamics with GPS and triaxial accelerometers

X. Meng ∗ , A.H. Dodson, G.W. Roberts
Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy (IESSG), The University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

Received 16 June 2006; received in revised form 30 January 2007; accepted 14 March 2007
Available online 23 April 2007

Abstract

GPS and triaxial accelerometers have been used in field tests to record the response of the Wilford Bridge, a suspension footbridge over the
River Trent in Nottingham, to forced vibration excited by more than 30 people with a total weight of 2353 kg, as well as subsequent decayed
free vibration and ambient vibration caused by casual pedestrian traffic and weak wind loading. A peak-picking approach based on the bandpass
filtering technique and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is employed to extract dominant local vibration frequencies and relevant vibration amplitudes
of the bridge. It is found that the maximum frequency discrepancies between ambient and forced vibrations and that for ambient excitation against
decayed vibration are 2.5% and 3.0%, respectively. The maximum frequency difference between different excitation manners is less than 2%. This
provides evidence that precise structural natural frequencies of the bridge can be estimated from either the responding measurements of decayed
free vibration or ambient vibration. These estimated frequencies, using GPS and accelerometer measurements, match well with the predictions
from a dedicated Finite Element (FE) model created for the bridge. This paper concludes that GPS is a viable tool for both structural deflection
monitoring and natural frequency detection and the measurements from a triaxial accelerometer can be used to validate the estimated dynamics
from the GPS measurements and improve the overall monitoring system performance.
c 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Global Positioning System (GPS); Deformation monitoring; Digital signal processing (DSP); Identification of structural dynamics

1. Introduction receivers). Undoubtedly, an integrated sensor system consisting

Efforts have been made in recent years to use an integrated
monitoring system consisting of dual frequency GPS receivers
and triaxial accelerometers for the detection of the dynamics
of structures such as high-rise buildings and short to medium
span bridges [1,2]. Attempts have also been made to use GPS
alone to monitor very long span suspension bridges due to
the shortcomings of using an accelerometer to measure slow
structural movement with a vibration frequency lower than
0.2 Hz [3–6]. For instance, the main span of the Humber Bridge
in the UK is 1.410 km long and its first natural frequency in the
vertical direction is around 0.116 Hz [7]. Most accelerometers
are not able to accurately detect such a slow bridge motion [8].
However, accelerometers still have a complementary advantage
in detecting relatively higher vibrations of the same bridge
which proves to be difficult for current GPS receivers sampling
at 20 Hz (an available data rate of dual frequency geodetic GPS
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 115 8466029; fax: +44 115 9513881.
E-mail address: xiaolin.meng@nottingham.ac.uk (X. Meng).
of GPS receivers, accelerometers, displacement transducers,
strain gauges, weather stations, or even ground-based pseudo-
satellite (pseudolite) transmitters can greatly increase the
accuracy, reliability and productivity of the overall monitoring
system [9].
A variety of GPS and accelerometer integration approaches
can be employed, such as tightly or loosely coupled
sensor integration, and post-processing of recorded GPS and
accelerometer measurements. Due to its complexity, fully
automated multiple sensors based online monitoring system has
not yet been developed. Post-processing is currently used in the
data fusion of GPS and accelerometer measurements.
In the case of bridge deformation monitoring a rigid
axis alignment between the sensor axis and the bridge main
axis, and the time synchronisation of GPS and accelerometer
measurements always pose problems. Any axis misalignment
and unsynchronised measurement time series will reduce
the accuracy of estimated structural dynamics and cause
difficulty in the comparison of these estimated values with
the computational predictions from models for the validation

c 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

0141-0296/$ - see front matter

doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2007.03.012
 X. Meng et al. / Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184
Fig. 1. The Chebyshev digital bandpass filter of 8th order.
purpose. Two approaches have previously been developed by
the authors to tackle these problems, i.e. seamless attachment of
a GPS antenna with a triaxial accelerometer and using the GPS
pulse per second (PPS) signal to trigger the data acquisition of
a triaxial accelerometer [10,11].
The focus of this paper is on the algorithm aspects for
the detection of structural dynamics of a test bridge and
the development of analytical methods. An approach for
precisely picking up the structural vibration frequencies and
their corresponding amplitudes is introduced. This approach
consists of a bandpass filter for identifying specific frequencies
and a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm for precisely
detecting local dominant frequencies. To demonstrate the
feasibility of this approach, coordinate time series and
acceleration measurements collected with GPS receivers and
triaxial accelerometers from a short suspension footbridge are
processed, mainly for vibration frequencies and amplitudes,
by using different analytical approaches. These estimates are
then compared with the predictions of a dedicated finite
element (FE) model for the bridge. The results prove that
the measurements from an integrated GPS and accelerometer
system can indeed be used to accurately extract structural
dynamics and detect deformation of a few millimetres.
2. A peak-picking approach for extracting structural
vibration frequencies and corresponding amplitudes
Designing a proper digital filter for the extraction of
structural dynamics is an important aspect of structural
deformation analysis. A Chebyshev type digital filter is used
in the design of a bandpass filter using passband and stopband
frequencies, passband ripple in decibels, filter order and data
sampling rate as its input parameters to the filter [12]. Fig. 1
shows the frequency responses of an 8-order Chebyshev
type digital filter which can be used to detect responding
frequencies between 1.0 to 3.0 Hz. (For other frequency bands
it is only necessary to adjust the input parameters to the
filter.) Measurement time series in a format of coordinate or
acceleration are filtered either to reduce the noise level or
to split the measurements such that only the real signals to
3179
Fig. 2. Wilford Bridge over the River Trent in Nottingham, UK.
the allotted frequency band are output for further analysis. A
narrow moving window FFT is then applied to the filtered
measurement outputs to further extract both the vibration
frequencies located within the designated frequency band and
the corresponding vibration amplitude of the frequencies.
3. The Wilford suspension footbridge and trials with GPS
and triaxial accelerometers
The Wilford Bridge is a suspension footbridge over the
River Trent in Nottingham, UK. The bridge is a 69 m long
and 3.7 m wide and supported by two sets of suspension
cables restrained by two massive masonry anchorages; its
steel deck is covered by a floor of wooden slats as shown
in Fig. 2. This bridge was extensively utilised by the authors
and project partners as a testbed for a UK’s Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) monitoring
project in the recent years [10]. In the course of the project,
an analytical finite element (FE) model was developed by
the project partner, Cranfield University, using field measured
structural dimensions and construction materials as the initial
inputs since there were no detailed design drawings available
for this possibly 100 years old bridge. The initial FE model was
then gradually updated through a series of validation processes
with GPS and accelerometer measurements.
On May 13, 14 and 15, 2003, trials were carried out on the
Wilford suspension footbridge. The instrument set-up for the
trials can be seen in Fig. 3 and consisted of two Leica 530
reference stations installed as shown in Fig. 2 and other 12
Leica 530 dual and 510 single frequency GPS receivers with
their antennas (AT504, AT503 and AT502 types) clamped to
the bridge handrail using specially designed U-shaped clamps.
The sensor positions were determined using an Effective
Independence-Driving-Point Residue (EFI-DPR) technique
developed by Cranfield University for the convenience of
extraction of structural dynamic. Details about EFI-DPR
algorithm can be found in [13]. The mid-span sites (BG3 and
BG9 in Fig. 3 were also equipped with two Kistler K-Beam
A8393A2 type triaxial accelerometers (technical parameters
can be found from http://www.kistler.com/), sampling analogue
data in voltage at a rate of 80 Hz while the remaining
GPS receivers sampled the raw GPS measurements at 10 Hz.
The GPS antenna and the triaxial accelerometer were housed
together in an integrated mount at each mid-span site and
3180 X. Meng et al. / Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184
Table 1
Different ways to excite the bridge
Events
Event 9
Event 10
Event 11
Event 12
Event 13
Event 14
Event 15
Fig. 3. A sensors’ layout for the Wilford Bridge, where Ref1 and Ref2 are two
reference stations on the river bank and others (BGx) are monitoring stations
on the bridge.
the main axis of the accelerometer was aligned to the major
axis of the bridge using a theodolite to maintain a rigid and
highly accurate sensor axis alignment with the bridge axis
during the trials [2]. The GPS raw measurements were recorded
by a 32 Mb compact flashcard whilst the raw acceleration
measurements were collected directly onto a laptop. Short
period forced excitation tests were carried out everyday with
either unknown or precisely measured load, through people
jumping together on the bridge at different places, running over
the bridge, and shaking the cables. However, most data sets
were collected while the bridge was in a natural oscillation
condition with occasional pedestrian passing. GPS data were
post-processed in a kinematic manner to obtain each epoch’s
positioning solution for each monitoring site on the bridge and
the analogue accelerometer measurements were converted to
3D accelerations (m/s/s) using calibrated scale factors and zero
acceleration biases as introduced in [2]. Precisely synchronised
displacements measured by GPS receiver at each bridge site
were used to estimate the vibration frequencies, modal shapes
and damping ratios of the bridge dynamics. Details about this
process can be found in [14]. However, in this paper only the
GPS and accelerometer data sets collected at a mid-span site
BG9 in an afternoon session on 15th May 2003 are used as a
demonstration for the detection of the vibration frequencies and
corresponding amplitudes of the bridge motion.
Table 1 lists the selected 7 sample events and their
descriptions for how the bridge was excited. During two major
excitation tests (Events 9 and 10), 15 volunteers from nearby
Description of activities
30 people jump together at mid-span, total weight 2353 kg
30 people jump together at mid-span, then 15 people leave
15 people run in a single file from east to west in the middle of the bridge, total weight 1253 kg
15 people run in a single file from west to east on the south side of the bridge
15 people run in a single file from east to west on the north side of the bridge
15 people jump together at mid-span
15 people jump together at mid-span
Fig. 4. Mean displacements calculated from GPS and accelerometer
measurements (10 Hz).
Nottingham County Council joined other 15 IESSG staff and
added up the total excitation weight as 2353 kg. Each excitation
lasted for about two minutes including a forced movement of
about 20 s and other decayed free oscillation for the bridge to
settle down for about 1 min and 40 s.
Fig. 4 is the comparison of the mean bridge vertical displace-
ments calculated directly from GPS measurements and through
the double integral of acceleration for the time period when the
above events occurred. The maximum forced peak-to-peak ver-
tical movement caused by 30 people reached 8 cm.
4. Results and analysis
This section demonstrates the detection of frequencies from
ambient vibration, forced movement, and decayed oscillation of
the bridge, using the above-mentioned peak-picking approach.
4.1. Extracted modal frequencies
By using ambient excitation loadings such as wind, waves,
vehicular or pedestrian traffic or any combination of the service
loadings, it is possible to extract structural modal parameters
such as natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping ratios
from responding measurements. This approach is popular
due to its convenience and cost-effectiveness in measuring
the vibration response without suspending the service of
an operational bridge. Comparison with the results of more
complex forced vibration tests has shown that precise natural
frequencies can be obtained from ambient vibration with a very
small discrepancy [15].
 X. Meng et al. / Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184 3181

Table 2
Modal frequencies extracted from GPS and accelerometer measurements

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Modal GPS/Acc. (E 9, Hz) GPS/Acc. (E 10, Hz) Amb. vib. (Hz) Decayed vib. (Hz) FE Diff. Diff. Diff.
freq. model (2–3%) (3–4%) (4–5%)
1 – 1.504 1.508 – – – 0.0 –
2 1.621 1.604 – – – −1.2 – –
3 – 1.681 – – – – – –
4 1.700 1.732 1.732 1.733 1.740 1.9 0.0 0.0
5 1.878 1.901 1.860 – – 1.2 −2.1 –
6 2.100 2.200 2.254 2.300 – 1.0 2.5 −2.0
7 – – – 2.600 2.600 – – –
8 2.927 2.904 2.973 2.933 – −0.7 2.4 1.0
9 3.047 – 3.148 3.067 – – – 2.5
10 3.177 – 3.236 3.333 – – – −3.0
11 3.993 3.957 – – – 0.9 – –
12 4.245 4.202 4.261 – −1.0 1.4 –
13 4.500 4.500 4.500 4.500 4.490 0.0 0.0 0.0
14 – 4.732 – – – – – –
15 4.798 4.832 4.783 4.800 – 0.7 −1.0 −0.4
16 4.900 4.908 4.967 – – 0.2 1.2 –
The italic values indicate possible natural frequencies estimated by different approaches and FE prediction.

Fig. 5. Extracted dynamics from the response of ambient structural vibration Fig. 6. The amplitude of decayed free vibration and corresponding first natural
(acceleration, 80 Hz). frequency (re-sampled acceleration, after Event 9, 10 Hz).

As previously mentioned, the bridge used in this experiment
generally experiences ambient oscillation with occasional
pedestrian traffic during most of the data collection period.
Fig. 5 shows a typical example of extracted vertical acceleration
in time domain and corresponding power of the vibration
frequencies from 80 Hz acceleration time series under ambient
vibration, for a total of 1800 samples, an equivalent of a 22.5 s
observation period. The dominant frequency identified for the
whole frequency band is 1.732 Hz, which is very close to
the prediction by the FE model of 1.74 Hz [14]. Other local
dominant frequencies less than 5 Hz (the Nyquist frequency of
10 Hz GPS data) are also extracted with the proposed peak-
picking approach but only the frequencies detected by both GPS
and accelerometer are listed in column 4 of Table 2.
Extraction of the free decayed signal from ambient or
excited dynamic response is the first step and also a precise
approach in the estimation of real structural dynamics. If such
time series can be directly measured from field tests then no
complex signal decomposition for obtaining free oscillation
is required [14]. Fig. 6 shows a process of structural vertical
motion decay detected by the accelerometer after relaxation
from a forced excitation, using a very narrow pass band
filter around the first natural frequency (Event 9 in Table 1).
The dominant vibration frequency detected is also 1.733 Hz,
which is the first natural frequency of the Wilford suspension
footbridge predicted by the FE model. After comparing with
the frequencies extracted from GPS coordinate measurements
collected at the same period of time, the common vertical
frequencies detected by both sensors are listed in column 5 of
Table 2.
Forced excitation with a known load is another widely used
approach for detecting the dynamics of small to medium size
structures. However it might not be a feasible way to excite
and identify structural dynamics of large structures such as the
Humber Bridge since it is not cost-effective and also because
there is virtually no difference between ambient vibration and
forced excitation for a bridge of such a size [15]. As in Figs. 5
and 6, accelerometer data sampled at 80 Hz is again used to
3182 X. Meng et al. / Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184
Fig. 7. The amplitude of forced vibration and corresponding vibration
frequency from accelerometer measurement (Event 9, acceleration, 80 Hz).
Fig. 8. The amplitude of forced vibration and corresponding frequencies from
GPS measurement (Event 9, GPS, 10 Hz).
demonstrate how the structural acceleration and its frequencies
are extracted from forced motion for Event 9 when 30 people
excited the bridge. The results are shown in Fig. 7. However,
the dominant frequency for the whole frequency band [1, 4.9]
is 2.10 Hz which is another possible natural frequency. A
prominent but dominant frequency of 1.700 Hz is also detected.
For comparison, the common vibration frequencies detected
with GPS and accelerometer for the forced movements of
Events 9 and 10 are listed in columns 2 and 3 in Table 2.
4.2. Validating detected vibration frequencies
In this section, different comparisons are made to validate
obtained structural dynamics, mainly vibration frequencies.
(1) Directly extract amplitude and vibration frequencies
from original measurements. For instance, the vibration
frequencies and their corresponding mean movements of a
synchronised 80 Hz acceleration time series for Event 9 are
shown in Fig. 7 and those extractions from a 10 Hz GPS
coordinate time series are shown in Fig. 8.
Fig. 9. Re-sampled acceleration for structural amplitude and frequencies
(Event 9, acceleration, 10 Hz).
(2) Re-sampled 10 Hz acceleration versus 10 Hz GPS
coordinate measurement for detecting the vibration
frequencies. As shown in Fig. 9, 80 Hz acceleration is re-
sampled to 10 Hz for the ease of frequency comparison with
GPS. Compared with Fig. 7 it can be found that after re-
sampling the FFT spectral power of the acceleration data
is significantly reduced since the re-sampling is actually a
filtering procedure and also there is a slight reduction in the
amplitude of the acceleration. Listed in Column 2 of Table 2
are the frequencies identified through the comparison of
the detected frequencies of Figs. 8 and 9. From these two
figures, it can be found that when forced excitation was
removed the amplitude of acceleration gradually reduce to
zero but the random noise of GPS measurement is still
apparent with less than 1 cm amplitude.
(3) Comparing the acceleration time series between that
derived from GPS measurement and the re-sampled 10 Hz
acceleration of the accelerometer. As a reverse process of
double integral of acceleration measurements for obtaining
the relative displacement, a vertical coordinate time series
of GPS is differenced twice to obtain acceleration time
series. Through this procedure, most multipath signature
at lower frequency band is eliminated which is evident
through comparing the lower spectral parts of Figs. 8
and 10. The amplitude of re-sampled 10 Hz acceleration
is slightly higher than that derived acceleration from
GPS coordinate time series as shown in Fig. 11. The
spectrum and frequencies of GPS derived acceleration
match well with that of re-sampled acceleration for the
lower frequency band (<2.25 Hz) but differ each other in
the higher frequency band as shown in Fig. 12. GPS seems
more sensitive in detecting these low frequencies than an
accelerometer as discussed in the beginning of this paper.
(4) On the contrary, displacement time series derived from
double integral of acceleration is larger than that from
direct GPS measurements since small accelerometer biases
and scale factor error are amplified in the double integral
process (Fig. 13). It is nearly impossible to calibrate an
 X. Meng et al. / Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184
Fig. 10. GPS derived acceleration for detecting amplitude and vibration
frequencies (Event 9, 10 Hz).
Fig. 11. GPS derived acceleration versus re-sampled acceleration (10 Hz).
accelerometer to free of these sensor related errors and
biases.
Similar analysis is applied to the response measurements
collected from Event 10 and the identified frequencies are
also listed in Table 2 (column 3). FE frequency predictions
are listed as column 6 in Table 2. Frequency discrepancies
between forced excitations of Event 9 and Event 10, forced
vibration and ambient vibration, and ambient vibration and
decayed free motion are calculated and listed in the final three
columns in Table 2. The maximum frequency differences for
each comparison are 1.9%, 2.5%, and 3.0%, respectively.
5. Conclusions
Precise detection of structural dynamics such as natural
frequencies, mode shapes and damping ratios is an important
aspect for structural health monitoring (SHM). This paper
demonstrates how to use GPS and accelerometer data
to mutually validate extracted vibration frequencies and
movement amplitude. The structural response measurements of
GPS and accelerometers to different excitations such as forced
vibration, ambient vibration and decayed free motion from the
Wilford suspension footbridge are used to extract the motion
amplitude and corresponding vibration frequencies. To support
3183
Fig. 12. Spectral analysis of GPS derived acceleration versus re-sampled
acceleration (10 Hz).
Fig. 13. Displacement analysis of GPS measurement versus double integral of
re-sampled 10 Hz acceleration.
data analysis, a frequency peak-picking approach consisting
of bandpass filtering and an FFT algorithm is developed. It
is found that the maximum frequency discrepancies due to
different excitation methods are less than 3%. The first natural
frequencies of the Wilford suspension bridge, detected from the
response measurements of decayed free vibration and validated
by other approaches, are 1.733 Hz, 2.300 Hz, 2.600 Hz,
2.933 Hz, 4.500 Hz and 4.800 Hz. The initial FE model
developed by Cranfield University has only partially predicted
these frequencies as listed in Table 2. Higher frequencies
(>5 Hz) might also be detectable but no validation will
be possible since this is out off the capacity of a 10 Hz
GPS receiver used for the tests. In the analysis of structural
dynamics, GPS coordinate time series are differenced to
output accelerations and these values match well with those
of real acceleration data from the accelerometer. On the
contrast, relative displacements estimated through acceleration
double integral are compared with those from direct GPS
coordinates and good results are also achieved. It is found that
acceleration obtained by double differencing the displacement
is slightly smaller than either re-sampled acceleration or the
original acceleration of an accelerometer but that multipath is
nearly removed out by the process. Due to the sensor biases
3184 X. Meng et al. / Engineering Structures 29 (2007) 3178–3184
and scale factor errors, relative displacement estimated from
double integral of acceleration is larger than GPS displacement
measurement. However, these effects will not affect the precise
estimation of natural frequencies since these differences in
the motion amplitudes do not change the cycles of structural
movements. If proper algorithms are applied to the field
testing data, both amplitude and natural frequencies can be
precisely determined by GPS and accelerometers, indicating
high reliability of proposed algorithms for tracking very small
vibration amplitudes of a few millimetres.
Acknowledgements
The author is indebted to Dr. E. Cosser for her involvement
in the field testing of the Wilford suspension bridge. Dr.
M. Meo, who previously worked at Cranfield University but is
now a senior lecturer at Bath University, is acknowledged for
the development the initial FE model of the Wilford suspension
bridge. Thanks also go to the UK’s Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for financial support. Dr.
Andrew Sowter at the IESSG is acknowledged for proofreading
this paper.
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