FreeRTOS Application in a Real-Time Air Quality Monitoring Architecture for Smart Campus

Abstract

Monitoring air quality in smart campuses is essential for safeguarding the health of the academic community, as air pollution in university environments can lead to respiratory and cardiac issues. While the Internet of Things (IoT) offers a suitable solution for monitoring and notifying about air quality in smart campuses, it is of paramount importance that these notifications occur in real-time to ensure information reaches users with minimal latency. This paper presents an architecture for collecting, storing, and notifying about atmospheric pollutants in a smart campus and analyzes the use of Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) for managing the system. The evaluation focuses on IoT technologies, represented by the end node, gateway, and cloud server. The experimental results show that using RTOS reduces the average transmission interval by 37.5% and achieves higher transmission and reception throughput compared to non-real-time operating systems. For instance, in a monitored location, the transmission and reception throughput reached approximately 178.23 and 164.18 with RTOS, compared to 110.97 and 99.41 without RTOS, respectively.