Real Time IoT Based Air Quality Monitoring System
Air is the most essential element on the earth for the survival of living beings as well as for the plants. Poor air quality is the most serious environmental health issue globally. Air pollution affects our day to day activities and quality of life. It poses a threat to the ecosystem and the qualit
2025-06-28 16:34:43 - Adil Khan
Real Time IoT Based Air Quality Monitoring System
Project Area of Specialization Internet of ThingsProject SummaryAir is the most essential element on the earth for the survival of living beings as well as for the plants. Poor air quality is the most serious environmental health issue globally. Air pollution affects our day to day activities and quality of life. It poses a threat to the ecosystem and the quality of life on the planet. Air pollution can cause health problems, for example, high concentrations of air pollutants (poor air quality) can aggravate existing respiratory diseases such as asthma and bronchitis, or increase the risk of respiratory problems. Unfortunately the rapid industrialization, urbanization, and emissions from transportation and agricultural emissions are the major causes of air pollution today.
According to the World Air Quality report, Pakistan was the second most polluted country in 2018. At the time of writing this article, Karachi and Lahore were among the 10 cities in the world to have the most polluted air, with Lahore's AQI (Air Quality Index) at 188 and Karachi's at 182(Dawn News, Pakistan). Carbon dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Sulphur Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, Particulate Matter are the most common air pollutants that are being emitted by different human activities on the earth. The high value of air temperature and humidity are the two other dangerous factors for the living beings and plants as well.
Since better air quality is very much important for healthy environment. Therefore, to control the air pollution an accurate monitoring of the air quality is essential. An accurate air quality monitoring system can help us to aware the public as well as can give recommendations to the policy makers to provide guidelines to industrialists and to the public. The proposed project “Real Time IoT Based Air Quality Monitoring System” is just about acquisition of the data of concentration of the above mentioned pollutants with the help of electronic sensors and to provide a real time IoT based system to show the acquired values in numerical format to a common person. The real time gathered data will be organized and analyzed in the internet cloud and will be shared with relevant people wirelessly through IoT platform.
Project Objectives- The proposed system is aim to provide real-time accurate information of the air quality in the surroundings to the public and policy makers.
- To provide a tool to accurately measure the concentration of some hazardous gases and other harmful components present in the air.
- To help the policy makers and public to continuously monitor the real time air quality to ensure the eco-friendly environment.
- The main objective of the proposed system is to develop an IoT based digital system to monitor real time quality of air.
- To store and process the data of the different air components in the IoT based cloud to analyse and predict the air quality in future.
- To design an efficient electronic circuitry able to give accurate results.
- To design a wireless portable device in the Fabrication-Lab.
- Literature review will include the study of different parameters present in the air and the understanding of good quality air components and to determine the parameters that disturb the air quality (1 Month).
- The crystallization of electronic sensors and modules to sense the data of the air components (2 Months).
- The interfacing of the sensors and modules with the microcontroller to acquire and process the data (2 Months).
- The pre-prototyping, transmission and storage of data acquired from the sensors and modules in the cloud for organization and analysis (2 Months).
- The development of web/smartphone application to display the real time results (2 Months).
- Finally to develop a hardware prototype in the Fabrication Lab (2 Months).
- Documentation (1 Months).
Timeline :
- 1st Quarter of the year: Literature review and Design Frame work Crystallisation.
- 2nd Quarter of the year: Programming and Successful testing of the developed algorithm/technique.
- 3rd Quarter of the year: Results analysis and thesis write-up for final submission
- Real time IoT based air quality monitoring system will be able to provide real time accurate concentration of some important pollutants present in the air.
- Data collected by the monitoring system will help us to assess the impact of poor air on the health of living beings
- This system will also help us in determining the most air polluted area of a city which doesn’t match WHO or OSHA standards.
- Air monitoring system can also be helpful in determining whether the air pollution control programs devised in a locality are working efficiently or not.
- This monitoring system would assist us in determining the short term and long term diseases occur due to increased air pollution.
- Data collected by air monitoring system will also help the policy makers to take preventive measures to stop increase in air pollution.
- This device also make less human interaction in risky areas, such as if a fire occurs in a forest then this device will automatically sense the combustion emissions and notify the monitoring officer.
- Air monitoring system can also be installed in the factories or industries, to maintain the air quality standards by continuously monitoring the concentration of the chimney emissions.
- Air monitoring system can also be used for road side monitoring of vehicles such as most of the automobiles emit NO which react with Ozone layer and form NO2 which is affecting Ozone layer and hence creating the global warming.
- Air monitoring system can also be installed in hospitals to ensure the best quality of the air in the surroundings.
The proposed project “Real Time IoT Based Air Quality Monitoring System” is just about the analysis of air quality on the basis of the data acquired by the help of different gas, particulate matter, humidity and temperature sensors. The sensors will be interfaced with the microcontroller to achieve the data of some dangerous air pollutants like Carbon Monoxide(CO), Carbon Dioxide(CO2), Nitrogen Dioxide(NO2), Sulphur Dioxide(SO2) and Particulate Matter(PM) along with Humidity and Temperature in the air. The proposed project aims to collect data through various sensors, process the data using Arduino based microcontroller (Arduino UNO), then acquired information is transmitted to IoT enabled ThingSpeak Cloud via LoRaWAN protocol. In the cloud, the data is processed to provide information of the overall air quality in terms of the concentration of the impurities and the humidity along with temperature. Finally, air quality information is shared and analysed on smartphone/web using IoT based ThingSpeak platform. The system acquires data through Gas sensors (MG811, MQ-7, 2SH12, MICS-6814), Temperature and Humidity sensor (SHT11 or DHT22) and also the sensor (SDS011 or PMS5003) will be used to detect the particulate matter PM1.0, PM2.5, PM10 (the complex mixture includes both organic and inorganic particles, such as dust, pollen, soot, smoke, and liquid droplets in air). The overall focus of the project will be to identify and to evaluate the real time accurate saturation of these major pollutants present in the atmosphere. The proposed system would focus on the following harmful pollutants emitted into the atmosphere by different activities:
1. Carbon dioxide (MG811 Sensor Module)
2. Carbon Monoxide (MQ-7)
3. Sulphur Dioxide (2SH12 Sensor Module)
4. Nitrogen Dioxide (MICS-6814)
5. Particulate Matter (SDS011 or PMS5003)
Along with:
6. Temperature (SHT11 or DHT22)
7. Humidity (SHT11 or DHT22)
Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry HealthOther IndustriesCore Technology Internet of Things (IoT)Other TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for People, Climate ActionRequired Resources| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 79833 | |||
| Arduino MKR WAN 1310 | Equipment | 1 | 5898 | 5898 |
| SHT15 Humidity/Temperature Sensor | Equipment | 1 | 6208 | 6208 |
| MG811 CO2 Sensor | Equipment | 1 | 4656 | 4656 |
| 2SH12 SO2 Sensor | Equipment | 1 | 8561 | 8561 |
| PMS5003 Particulate Matter | Equipment | 1 | 19401 | 19401 |
| MICS-6814 NO2 Sensor Module | Equipment | 1 | 4109 | 4109 |
| AKX00016 - Arduino Pro Gateway for LoRa | Equipment | 1 | 21000 | 21000 |
| Shipment Charges | Miscellaneous | 1 | 10000 | 10000 |