Arbitrary wave loads are detected and reconstructed by a sensor system based on an inverse mechanism of continuous structure responses. A sensor system comprising a sensing component configured with a sandwich-structured beam of composite materials can generate the structural responses as a moving wave propagates across the beam. In one example, an Arnoldi-Tikhonov algorithm coupled with generalized cross-validation technique can be utilized to determine a regularization parameter that is utilized to compensate for the presence of noise in the wave load and/or the highly ill-posed problems of the inverse matrix that is utilized for wave reconstruction. Further, the Tikhonov algorithm can be utilized to reconstruct wave loads (e.g., at different location on the beam and/or different times) based on the structural response parameters and the regularization parameter. As an example, an image of the determined wave load values can be rendered in three dimensions (3-D) versus time and location.