Guided Wave SHM Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentrated at the top. the leading assignee holds 27 of 110 records, and the top 5 combined account for 48.2% of all 110 records in scope.
- Flat, not falling, filings. annual filings held steady from 2021 (4) to 2024 (4), a 0% change over that complete three-year span; 2025-2026 figures will rise as publication catches up.
- Testing and materials dominate the classes. G01M (testing machines & structure balance) and G01N (material analysis) cover 53.6% and 38.2% of the 110 records respectively, while temperature compensation (G01K) sits at just 8.2%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (4) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 110 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Guided wave structural health monitoring uses elastic waves travelling through a structure — a wing skin, a bridge deck, a pipeline wall — to detect damage without physical access to every inch of the surface. The patent activity tracked here spans 110 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from search terms tied to mode dispersion, temperature compensation, baseline subtraction, sensor durability, damage localization and coverage distance. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so recent-year counts understate actual filing activity.
The dataset spans aerospace primes, defence-affiliated research institutes, universities and instrumentation vendors, filing across receiving offices led by the United States, China and India. Claim activity clusters around structural testing and material analysis classes, while temperature compensation and signal-processing classes carry comparatively fewer filings.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trends and technology composition
The following figures come directly from the 110 records in scope, tracked by publication year and IPC subclass.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Annual filings rose from 2 in 2017 toward a peak of 11 in 2025, with 10 recorded so far in the partial 2026 year. The complete three-year window from 2021 to 2024 shows filings flat at 4 per year, a 0% change — a plateau rather than a decline, given the 18-month publication lag still working through the most recent years.
IPC subclass composition
G01M (testing machines & structure balance) appears on 53.6% of the 110 records and G01N (material analysis & testing) on 38.2%, confirming that most filings frame guided wave monitoring as a testing or materials-characterisation problem. Bridges (E01D) and force/pressure measurement (G01L) each sit at 15.5%, and temperature measurement (G01K) trails at 8.2% despite temperature compensation being one of the search terms defining this dataset — a signal that compensation methods are often bundled into broader testing claims rather than filed as standalone temperature-measurement art.
Shares are the percentage of the 110 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about guided wave structural health monitoring and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative claim
US20120323517A1 — Systems and methods for providing temperature compensation in structural health monitoring
Filed by The Boeing Company, this record describes compensating for environment-induced variation in structural health monitoring data: imparting a vibration onto a structure at a first temperature, receiving a comparison signal, accessing a previously stored reference signal captured at a second temperature, dividing both signals into multiple time windows, and cross-correlating the signals within each window to maximise correlation before extracting a damage indication.Filed 2012-12-20 · Assignee: The Boeing Company
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20020154029A1 | Sensor devices for structural health monitoring | 296 |
| 2 | US6006163A | Active damage interrogation method for structural health monitoring | 260 |
| 3 | US20080036617A1 | Energy harvesting, wireless structural health monitoring system | 254 |
| 4 | US7034660B2 | Sensor devices for structural health monitoring | 176 |
| 5 | US7719416B2 | Energy harvesting, wireless structural health monitoring system | 153 |
| 6 | US20060170535A1 | Sensor devices for structural health monitoring | 147 |
| 7 | US20080011091A1 | Method for measuring loading and temperature in structures and materials by measuring changes in natural freq… | 114 |
| 8 | US20110285527A1 | Wireless Structural Health Monitoring System with Synchronized Timekeeper | 60 |
| 9 | US20100164711A1 | Energy Harvesting, Wireless Structural Health Monitoring System with Time Keeper and Energy Storage Devices | 59 |
| 10 | US20130130734A1 | High sensitivity environmental sensor board and methods for structural health monitoring | 45 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and favour older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the data means for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the records are broken down by assignee, class and geography.
A short list of assignees controls half the field
The leading assignee alone holds 27 of the 110 records, and the top 5 combined account for 48.2% of all records in scope. The top 10 extend that to 63.6%, leaving a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants below rank ten.
Filings have plateaued, not declined
Across the last fully-published three-year window, annual filings held flat at 4 per year. The apparent dip in 2025-2026 in raw counts reflects publication lag rather than a slowdown in the field.
Testing claims dominate; temperature-specific claims are thin
Structural testing (G01M) and material analysis (G01N) classes cover most of the field, while temperature measurement (G01K) is claimed directly in only 8.2% of records despite temperature compensation being a defining search term for this dataset.
Filing is split across three distinct regimes
The United States leads with 41 records, followed by China at 21 and India at 18, with Europe, Austria and Canada trailing. A filer clearing prior art in one office cannot assume clearance in another given this spread.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to guided wave structural health monitoring, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape and collaboration patterns
Filing activity mixes an aerospace prime, defence-linked research institutes and a cluster of universities, with a handful of recurring co-filing pairs.
One aerospace filer sets the pace
The top-ranked assignee holds 27 of the 110 records in scope, well ahead of the rest of the field, reflecting a long-running internal program around structural monitoring for airframes.
Universities and military-affiliated colleges fill the mid-table
Institutions including US and Chinese universities and a Chinese military aviation college appear through the ranked list, several tied at low single-digit record counts by rank ten.
Collaboration is concentrated in a few repeat pairings
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, with the strongest pairings — including a Chinese university with an affiliated military aviation college, and named individual inventors filing jointly — each linked on 4 records.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| SRI International | 0 | — |
| University of Manitoba | 0 | — |
| Dalian University of Technology | 0 | — |
| The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois | 0 | — |
| Beihang University | 0 | — |
| Chinese People's Liberation Army Army Aviation College | 0 | — |
| TOWNSEND CHRIS PRUYN | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to a concentrated core and a thinner set of adjacent claim areas. The next step is testing a specific claim idea against this prior art directly.
Check a claim against the top-cited records
Before drafting around temperature compensation or baseline subtraction, run the specific claim language against the highest-cited records in this set to see how close prior art already sits.
Explore prior art in EurekaTrack the leading assignee's recent filings
With one assignee holding nearly a quarter of all records, monitoring its filing cadence gives an early signal of where the field's core claim space is still moving.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaMap white space before committing R&D spend
Under-claimed branches like temperature-compensated baseline subtraction or curved-structure damage localization carry lower filing density; validate that gap against full claim text before treating it as open.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the field with 27 of the 110 records tracked in this dataset, well ahead of the next-ranked filers. The top 5 assignees combined account for 48.2% of all 110 records, and the top 10 extend that to 63.6%. Below rank ten, filing activity spreads across a long tail of universities, research institutes and smaller filers with only one or two records each, so a freedom-to-operate check needs to look well past the leading names.
Filings held flat across the last fully-published three-year window, at 4 per year from 2021 through 2024, a 0% change. Raw counts for 2025 and 2026 look lower or partial, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than an actual slowdown; 2025 is in fact the highest year recorded so far at 11. Treat any apparent recent-year dip in this space with that lag in mind.
US20120323517A1, assigned to The Boeing Company and filed in 2012, claims a method for compensating for environment-induced variation in structural health monitoring signals. It works by dividing a captured comparison signal and a stored reference signal into multiple time windows, then cross-correlating the signals within each window to maximise alignment before extracting a damage indication. Anyone building a temperature-compensation approach that relies on windowed cross-correlation of guided wave signals should review this filing's specific claim scope before assuming a clear path.
Relative to the 53.6% of records touching structural testing classes (G01M) and 38.2% touching material analysis (G01N), temperature measurement claims (G01K) appear in only 8.2% of the 110 records, despite temperature compensation being one of the defining search terms for this dataset. That gap suggests compensation techniques are often folded into broader testing claims rather than filed as dedicated temperature-measurement art, leaving room to file more targeted claims in that specific area, alongside adjacent branches like curved-structure damage localization and long-range coverage-distance extension.
The United States leads with 41 records in this dataset, followed by China with 21 and India with 18. Europe (EPO), Austria and Canada trail behind with smaller counts. Because coverage varies so much by office, clearing prior art in the US does not guarantee freedom to operate in China or India, and a filer targeting multiple markets needs to check each receiving office separately.
Research Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole guided wave structural health monitoring corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.