Development of a smart sensor system to detect air pollution

Abstract

Air pollution is one of the global problems of modern world. According to World Health Organization only 9% of the world’s total population can breathe clean air. Particulate Matter, which is the mixture of liquid and solid particles having diameters less than 10 µm is one of the pollutants in air. Particulate Matter is mostly produced from burning reactions in factories, vehicles or homes. Several studies have shown the deleterious impact of particulate matter to public health and environment. The increase of particulate matter in air has been linked to many health problems such as lung disease, asthma, respiratory insufficiency, mortality in infants, heart attacks, cancer and etc. Developed countries have regulations for monitoring the air quality and conventional bulky stations are employed for that purpose. These stations are high-cost and they have limited spatial resolution. In order to overcome the limitations of existing monitoring systems, alternative approaches have been studied. In this study, an optical Particulate Matter sensor is designed, produced and tested for monitoring air quality. The developed system is low-cost and has high spatial resolution. The sensor network is able to communicate with cloud computing and allows remote data analysis. The developed sensor system is able to provide air quality data in correlation with the existing stations.