Evaluation of optimal sensor placement techniques for parameter identification in buildings

This paper addresses the application of six different optimal sensor placement (OSP) techniques in buildings. These techniques are the EFfective Independence (EFI), Optimal Driving Point (ODP), Non-Optimal Driving Point (NODP), Effective Independence Driving Point Residue (EFI-DPR), Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and the Sensor Set Expansion (SSE) methods. A toolbox OPTISEP is developed by the author for this purpose within the context of this paper. The techniques are compared among themselves by using various criteria. The overall results show that the SSE Technique is the best. First, the technique results in a dramatic reduction in the computational effort. Second, it allows a civil engineer to specify a set of locations that they absolutely want to keep in the final sensor configuration. Mozst importantly, while the sensor distribution estimated by other techniques is mainly concentrated in a certain storey of the building, SSE gives a homogeneous sensor distribution throughout the building. Finally, it is shown that the technique i s also robust against noise in the measurements.