Energy neutral design of an IoT system for pollution monitoring

A lot of research and studies have shown the impact of pollution on health, and a lot of regulation are in action in the European Union and other countries around the world defining the allowed concentration levels of volatile chemicals. Standard measurements equipment are very expensive, and static large stations require space and high power consumption, thus are not suitable to realize portable equipment nor to seamlessly be integrated in Smart Cities. In this paper we present the design and evaluation of a portable pollution monitoring equipment as small as 20×15×5 cm, powered by mini PV arrays, embedding particulate matter and CO/VOCs sensors for air quality estimation. A LoRa radio transceiver completes the set of peripherals. Finally, energy budget analysis shows that neutral operations can be achieved enabling a “deploy and forget” paradigm suitable for the IoT.