Distributed wireless architecture for prognostics is an important enabling step in prognostic research in order to achieve feasible real-time system health management. A significant problem encountered in implementation of such architectures is power management. In this paper, we present robust power management techniques for a generic health management architecture that involves diagnostics and prognostics for a system comprising multiple heterogeneous components.

The integration of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems into in-service applications has been hindered by the implied infrastructure, specifically wires for power and data from each sensor an acquisition and/or processing unit. Prior research by the present investigators has demonstrated a patented method of point-of-measurement datalogging for SHM, thereby greatly reducing the required quantity of cable by locally converting analog signals into digital data that can be placed on a common sensor-bus.