Abstract
Wireless sensor networks can provide a cheap and flexible infrastructure to support the measurement of noise pollution. However, the processing of the gathered data is challenging to implement on resource-constrained nodes, because each node has its own limited power supply, low-performance and low-power micro-controller unit and other limited processing resources, as well as limited amount of memory. We propose a sensor node for monitoring of indoor ambient noise. The sensor node is based on a hardware platform with limited computational resources and utilizes several simplifications to approximate more complex and costly signal processing stage. Furthermore, to reduce the communication between the sensor node and a sink node, as well as the power consumed by the IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) transceiver, we perform digital A-weighting filtering and non-calibrated calculation of the sound pressure level on the node. According to experimental results, the proposed sound level meter can accurately measure the noise levels of up to 100 dB, with the mean difference of less than 2 dB compared to Class 1 sound level meter. The proposed device can continuously monitor indoor noise for several days. Despite the limitations of the used hardware platform, the presented node is a promising low-cost and low-power solution for indoor ambient noise monitoring.
Highlights
Noise pollution is a common problem in urban environments
As a solution to aforementioned goals, we present an accurate sound-level meter, which is a part of the low-power and low-cost wireless sensor node
In this subsection we present the design and implementation of the proposed A-weighting filter that is used in the Sound Level Meter
Summary
Noise pollution is a common problem in urban environments. Typical environmental or background noise levels in residential areas range from 30 dB to 80 dB. It has been shown that noise pollution affects people’s health and cognition and long-term exposure to sound levels over. 85 dB causes hearing damage [1]. Studies [2,3] investigated effects of exposure to office noise on comfort, symptoms, work performance and showed that everyday exposure to noise disturbance affected negatively comfort, selected symptoms, and self-assessed work performance. Participants were less likely to make ergonomic, postural adjustments on their computer workstations while working in noisy conditions. The studies showed that noise may even affect their judgment of the noise exposure
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