City Scale Particulate Matter Monitoring Using LoRaWAN Based Air Quality IoT Devices.

Steven J Johnston,Gavin L Foster,Florentin M J Bulot,Andrew K R Morris,Charlie Davenport,Mihaela Apetroaie-Cristea,Philip J Basford,Natasha H C Easton,Matthew Loxham,Simon J Cox

doi:10.3390/s19010209

Abstract

Air Quality (AQ) is a very topical issue for many cities and has a direct impact on citizen health. The AQ of a large UK city is being investigated using low-cost Particulate Matter (PM) sensors, and the results obtained by these sensors have been compared with government operated AQ stations. In the first pilot deployment, six AQ Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been designed and built, each with four different low-cost PM sensors, and they have been deployed at two locations within the city. These devices are equipped with LoRaWAN wireless network transceivers to test city scale Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) coverage. The study concludes that (i) the physical device developed can operate at a city scale; (ii) some low-cost PM sensors are viable for monitoring AQ and for detecting PM trends; (iii) LoRaWAN is suitable for city scale sensor coverage where connectivity is an issue. Based on the findings from this first pilot project, a larger LoRaWAN enabled AQ sensor network is being deployed across the city of Southampton in the UK.

Highlights

Six Air Quality (AQ) Internet of Things (IoT) devices for monitoring AQ have been deployed across at schools in Southampton, UK [1]
The closest AURN monitoring station, “Southampton Centre” [49], is located about 1 km away from School A as shown in Figure 3 and about 2 km away from School B. This station produces hourly PM2.5 concentration data, which is compared to the hourly PM2.5 concentrations measured by the sensors of the AQ IoT devices
The preliminary analysis of the data collected by the AQ IoT devices in both schools suggest that the four sensors were all able to capture the variations in Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations with variations and patterns similar to the PM concentrations measured by the reference station

Summary

Introduction

Six Air Quality (AQ) Internet of Things (IoT) devices for monitoring AQ have been deployed across at schools in Southampton, UK [1] This deployment was a pilot and is currently being expanded to include more sites across the city and surrounding area. The objective was to demonstrate the capability of the AQ IoT devices to capture spatio-temporal variations of Particulate Matter (PM) air pollutants in order to raise public awareness on AQ issues. These devices acted as a feasibility study for a Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology called LoRaWAN which promises long-range wireless communication to enable sensor deployments in remote areas or locations without connectivity. This publication shows PM sensor data collected from the AQ IoT devices over a seven-month period, correlated with reference AQ

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion