Design and Development of Low-cost Wireless Sensor Device for Air Quality Networks

Urban air pollution is a serious concern as it severely affects human health. To address this concern, we present the development and analysis of a low-cost wireless sensor device for air quality networks with real-time monitoring. Low power electrochemical gas sensors (NO2 and O-3) and a Particulate Matter (PM2.5) sensor are interfaced to a low power sub-1GHz RF transceiver for the accumulation and transmission of measured data of ambient air pollutants. Raspberry Pi is used at the host node for acquiring, storing the data from sensor devices, and to upload the data on the web server for visualization and analytics. The gas sensor devices are deployed against the high-quality reference-grade analyzers for calibration and data validation. The processing of raw sensor data yields the coefficient of determination (R-2) values > 0.80. Priced at less than $500 with power consumption less than 0.5W, the device is suitable for deployments of dense wireless sensor networks for air quality monitoring.