There exists a clear need to monitor the performance of civil structures over their operational
lives. Current commercial monitoring systems suffer from various technological and economic limitations
that prevent their widespread adoption. The wires used to route measurements from system sensors to the
centralized data server represent one of the greatest limitations since they are physically vulnerable and
expensive from an installation and maintenance standpoint. In lieu of cables, the introduction of low-cost
wireless communications is proposed. The result is the design of a prototype wireless sensing unit that
can serve as the fundamental building block of wireless modular monitoring systems (WiMMS). An
additional feature of the wireless sensing unit is the incorporation of computational power in the form of
state-of-art microcontrollers. The prototype unit is validated with a series of laboratory and field tests. The
Alamosa Canyon Bridge is employed to serve as a full-scale benchmark structure to validate the
performance of the wireless sensing unit in the field. A traditional cable-based monitoring system is
installed in parallel with the wireless sensing units for performance comparison.