Recent advanced sensor technology has enabled wireless smart sensor network (WSSN) for structural health monitoring (SHM). Because of many attractive features such as wireless communication, battery powered, on board computation, and low cost, the WSSN makes the dense array of sensors feasible for engineering practice.In this study, a method for fatigue life monitoring using wireless smart sensor networks is explored by implementing Rainflow cycle counting algorithm in the sensor network, which extracts the loading features including the number of each load cycles, amplitude and mean of strain.Instead of sending back raw strain data to basestation, only the onboard processed histogram of the strain data is transmitted, which tremendously reduces the amount of data and the associated energy consumption in the wireless smart sensor networks.In addition, the feasibility of the method is experimentally verified through lab-scale tests.