Environmental noise monitoring and mapping

Abstract

Decline of environmental noise and subsequent pollution are one of the most important purposes for citizens, scientists and public representatives nowadays. Many European legislative initiatives and studies deal with environmental noise monitoring. The enabling factor for this ongoing development is the availability of low-cost and low-power devices for sensing, computing and communication. Systems for monitoring and depicting noise maps in real-time are an engineering and economic challenge that has already been addressed in several studies. The aim of this paper is to study and demonstrate scalable architecture of noise measuring devices with real-time functionality, which allows for straightforward expansions with additional sensors, and energy harvesting features. This work describes the design and rapid prototyping of a wireless sensor node to monitor environmental noise based on a Raspberry Pi 3 and cost-effective electronic components. Raspberry Pi architecture allows for acoustic level acquisition to be carried out simultaneously with computation of environmental noise levels. The noise maps presented here are produced by pilot installation of three sensor nodes. The evaluation of nodes functionality through long-term measurement shows that the proposed approach provides a good foundation for noise monitoring and mapping.