Realizing Mobile Air Quality Monitoring System: Architectural Concept and Device Prototype

Air pollution is a critical issue in cities in developing countries like Hanoi, Vietnam. An efficient and comprehensive air quality monitoring system may reduce the harmfulness and improve the cities' sustainability. This paper presents a novel approach to realize such a system in which the air monitoring sensors are mobile. More specifically, we introduce a three-tier architecture for the air quality system, including sensing, communication, and application layers. Initially, we discuss each layer concept to bypass the limitation of the traditional stationary monitoring system. We then describe our design and implementation of air quality monitoring devices installed on vehicles, such as buses. The device is carefully designed to satisfy the conditions of impedance matching and power integrity. Besides, it fully functions in measuring parameters from the ambient environment. The device is aware of its location (using GPS) and uses Wi-Fi and 4G (LTE) to transmit sensing data on the Internet. We have conducted various experiments, including a trial deployment of the devices on a vehicle running in Hanoi. The results show our device achieves sensing data transmission with high-reliability levels (i.e., 97%, 100% on Wi-Fi, 4G (LTE), respectively). Moreover, the trial deployment confirms the feasible operation of our device in actual condition.