Energy Harvesting-enabled 5G Advanced Air Pollution Monitoring Device

Abstract

We have designed a 5G-capable environmental sensing network (ESN) node prototype, called Advanced Air Pollution Monitoring Device (AAPMD). The developed prototype system measures concentrations of NO2, Ozone, carbon monoxide, and sulphur dioxide using semiconductor sensors. Further, the system gathers other environmental parameters like temperature, humidity, PM1, PM2.5, and PM10. The prototype is equipped with a GPS sub-system for accurate geo-tagging. The board communicates through Wi-Fi and NB-IoT. AAPMD is also implemented with energy harvesting power management, and is powered through solar energy and battery backup. Compared to the conventional designs with Wi-Fi-based connectivity, the developed system consumes 10-times less energy while using 5G NB-IoT communication module, which makes it a very competitive candidate for massive deployment in highly polluted metro cities like Delhi and Kolkata, in India. The system can provide updated measurements of pollutant levels with controllable time granularity.