Study and realization of an energy-autonomous WSN for acceleration monitoring based on nano-drones

The growing need for Structural Health Monitoring of different constructions, from civil buildings to strategic and national infrastructures, and in various working conditions, from post-seismic damage assessment to ordinary maintenance checks, is leading the engineering industry. The introduction on the market of relatively cheap and open-source nano-drones, opened a research space towards potential simplification of the installation procedures, whose cost and intrinsic human risk are still an important limiting factor for widespread use in critical environments and situations. This thesis aims to address and evaluate the suitability of the Crazyflie 2.1 nano-drones as a wireless sensor network node for acceleration measurement. Key performance metrics such as structural accuracy and energy autonomy are evaluated, posing the basis for more versatile, modular, and scalable solutions based on hardware-software co-optimization. In this perspective, an efficient and lightweight energy harvester, necessary to reach a sufficient energy autonomy, has been developed following a modular design rule whose assembly on the drone would not require hardware modifications. Different strategies for firmware management have been explored pursuing complexity footprint minimization, aiming to a seamless integration with the existing system, thus improving scalability. Further assessments and comparison with respect to an existing ad-hoc commercial solution have been carried out, enlightening pros and cons of both systems.