Mobile Platform for Particulate Matter Monitoring

Amongst all the major hazard aspects for the health of people in big conglomerates is the increase of the particulate matter concentration. Traditional systems for particulate matter (PM) monitoring have a great number of drawbacks but the main issues are economical and are related to the installation costs and never ending periodical maintenance expenses. After all there are installations of such systems but their number is limited and having in mind the growth of population, cities and industry areas, there is even a bigger need for more information on air quality because PM changes non-linearly, has a wide range and different sources. In this paper, we propose an approach, based on low-cost sensor nodes, for real-time measuring and obtaining information about the PM concentration. The adoption of that approach allows for a detailed study of the intensities of pollution and its sources. The system power supply is powered by a PV module. The power supply unit is designed using a model-based design that is a new approach to prototyping power-operated electronic devices with guaranteed performance.