International Conference on Computing and Control Engineering (ICCCE 2012), 12 & 13 April, 2012

Zigbee Based Wireless Air Pollution Monitoring

Nikheel A. Chourasia
Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication Priyadarshini College of Engineering Nagpur,India [email protected]

Surekha P. Washimkar
Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication Priyadarshini College of Engineering Nagpur,India [email protected]

AbstractThe present state of the air quality control in almost

all industrial centers in our country is based on taking samples one or few times a day, which means that there is no information about time distribution of polluted materials intensity during day. This is the main disadvantage of such control, having in mind often changes of meteo conditions. Most of the systems for the air quality monitoring in West European countries work on real time bases. To prevent air pollution we have to provide real time monitoring of all polluted materials at proper locations by using distributed (real time) air quality monitoring systems.

Keywords-Air pollution Monitoring; Zigbee; Real Time I. INTRODUCTION Generally, the pollution has been defined as the presence of a substance in the environment that because of its chemical composition or quantity prevents the functioning of natural processes and produces undesirable environmental and health effects[3].In other words, pollution can causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the physical systems or living organisms they are in[4].With the fast development of the industrialization and urbanization process in the world, environmental pollution problems become one of the common topics in all country of the world. At present, there are air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution in worldwide. This thesis only discusses air pollution. Air pollution is the presence of contaminants or pollutant substances in the air that interfere with human health or welfare, or produce other harmful environmental effects[5].These pollutant substances usually result from vehicle emissions, Industrial emissions and volatile organic compounds. There are various issues of air pollution, and Most of all are health-related issues. In other words, clean air is a basic condition for health. The health issues caused by air pollutants may range from subtle biochemical and physiological changes to difficulty in breathing, wheezing, coughing and aggravation of existing respiratory and cardiac conditions. The World Health Organization states that 2.4 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution, with 1.5 million of these deaths attributable to indoor air pollution[6]. Based the fact above mentioned, the human should focus on air pollution monitoring. In the area, there are two methods to use to monitor air pollution at present. The one is passive sampling (nonautomatic), and the other is continuous online monitoring (automatic). The advantage of the passive sampling method lies in that the monitor equipment is simple and inexpensive,

but it can only get on-site monitoring parameters in a certain period, can not provide real-time values. Meanwhile, the results of monitoring effect by the man factor largely and it will seriously damage the health of the monitoring man in the site of high concentration of harmful substances. The procedure of continuous online monitoring method is as follows: use sensors to monitor the parameters, and then send to the control center by network. The way of data transfer include both wired and wireless. The wired way usually uses public telephone network, or fiber-optic to realize data transmission. Although this method is stable and reliable, with high speed of data transmission, but the shortcomings of the method is also obvious in a wide and dynamic range, such as complex network cabling, expensive,etc. With the rapid development of communication technology, network technology and remote sensing technology, there is a trend that air pollution monitoring system is often designed in wireless mode. At present, the wireless mode in air pollution monitoring system includes GSM, GPRS, etc. But these modes are high cost in both installation and maintenance, and complexity. In the other hand, Wireless sensor network have been rapidly developed during recent years. Starting from military and industrial controls, its advantages include the liability, simplicity, and low cost[7]. Based on these advantages, it is now being applied in environmental monitoring. In air pollution monitor applications, Jong-Won Kwon et al. Designed an air pollution monitoring system using ZigBee networks for UbiquitousCity. They focus on implementation of air pollution monitoring system, and developed an integrated wireless sensor board which employs dust, CO2, temperature/humidity sensor and a ZigBee module[8]. In China, Zhang Qian et al. compared the advantages of ZigBee with other two similar wireless networking protocols, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and proposed a wireless solution for greenhouse monitoring and control system based on ZigBee technology[7]. Geng Jun-tao et al. introduced the application background and research actuality of wireless sensor network in atmosphere environment monitor, designed the node hardware structure, and discussed the architecture and the system software of the atmosphere environment monitor system[9].Although some researchers have attempted to use wireless sensor network technology, such as ZigBee, to monitor the air pollution, its application in air pollution monitoring remain few. The paper reviews the development of the technology of

ISBN 978-1-4675-2248-9 2012 Published by Coimbatore Institute of Information Technology

International Conference on Computing and Control Engineering (ICCCE 2012), 12 & 13 April, 2012
the wireless sensor network and ZigBee, focusing on the requirements of air pollution monitoring system. Based on the above mentioned, the application schema of ZigBee based wireless sensor network is discussed. II. AIR QUALITY In a general way, it is possible to describe the atmosphere as a very thin gaseous film, where all the meteorological phenomena that regulate the human life occur. Filled with a great diversity of molecules (Table I), the atmosphere performs, at the same time, a role of protection and regulation. Air pollution can have various definitions. According to [6], air pollution means the presence, within the external atmospheres, of one or more contaminants, or its combination in quantities or with a temporal duration that can become harmful to human life, vegetable, animal or goods. The air contaminants include smokes, steams, paper hashes, dusts, soot, carbonic smokes, gases, fogs, radioactive material or toxic chemical products. Certain atmospheric pollutants react with each other creating others pollutants called secondary pollutants. The dissociation, trough the suns effect, of volatiles organic compounds, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by automobiles motors, lead to the formation of ozone, essentially during the summer, when temperature reaches higher levels.
TABLE I. AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF PURE AIR

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Carbon Dioxide is a gas essential to life in the planet, because it is one of the most important elements evolving photosynthesis process, which converts solar into chemical energy. The concentration of CO2 has increased due mainly to massive fossil fuels burning. This increase makes plants grow rapidly. The rapid growth of undesirable plants leads to the increase use of chemicals to eliminate them. Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) Sulphur Dioxide is a colorless gas, detectable by the distinct odor and taste. Like CO2, it is mainly due to fossil fuels burning and to industrial processes. In high concentrations may cause respiratory problems, especially in sensitive groups, like asthmatics. It contributes to acid rains. Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Nitrogen Dioxide is a brownish gas, easily detectable for its odor, very corrosive and highly oxidant. It is produced as the result of fossil fuels burning. Usually NO thrown to the atmosphere is converted in NO2 by chemical processes. In high concentrations, NO2 may lead to respiratory problems. Like SO2, it contributes to acid rains. III. ZIGBEE STANDARD The ZigBee is the new short range, low power, low data rate wireless networking technology for many applications. It is best specified the bottom three layers (Physical, Data Link, and Network), as well an Application Programming Interface (API) based on the 7-layer OSI model for layered communication systems. Figure-1 shows the layered protocol architecture adopted by the alliance. It should be noted that the ZigBee Alliance chose to use an already existing data link and physical layers specification. These are the recently published IEEE 802.15.4 standards for low rate personal area networks.

Element Nitrogen Oxygen Argon Carbon dioxide Neon Helium Methane Krypton Hydrogen Oxide Nitrous Xenon

Symbol N2 O2 Ar CO2 Ne He CH4 Kr H N 2O Xe

Proportion 78.084% 20.946% 0.943% 340 ppm 18.18 ppm 5.24 ppm 1.5 ppm 1.14 ppm 0.50 ppm 0.40 ppm 0.09 ppm

Air pollution has dramatic consequences for human health, leading to respiratory problems and even death [6] and for the environment like the greenhouse effect, acid rains and ozone layer reduction . The European Community has dedicated special attention to the problem of the most representative pollutants concentration, such as the case of Carbon Monoxide (CO), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Ozone (O3) and particles of 10 m or less (PM10) and special Regulations have been produced. Although the Carbonic Dioxide (CO2) isnt considered a pollutant, its concentration has also to be quantified, due to importance of this gas to the planets ecosystems. The system presented here is capable of measuring the following gases in the atmosphere:

Figure 1. Protocols stack for layered wireless Communication

A communication network is composed of many nodes, each of which can transmit and receive data over communication links, wireless or cabled supports network topologies. The ZigBee network layer supports star, tree and mesh topologies. The ZigBee coordinator is responsible for initiating and maintaining the devices on the network, and all other devices, known as end devices, directly communicate with the ZigBee coordinator. In mesh and tree topologies, the ZigBee coordinator is responsible for starting the network and

ISBN 978-1-4675-2248-9 2012 Published by Coimbatore Institute of Information Technology

International Conference on Computing and Control Engineering (ICCCE 2012), 12 & 13 April, 2012
for choosing certain key network parameters but the network may be extended through the use of ZigBee routers. In tree networks, routers move data and control messages through the network using a hierarchical routing strategy.
CO2 Sensor

LCD Display

Amplifier

Zigbee

A
SO2 Sensor

Amplifier

PIC D Micro Controller C

NO2 Sensor

Amplifier

GPS Receiver

Figure 2. Topologies for ZigBee

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines three frequency bands of operation: 868MHz, 916MHz and the 2.4GHZ bands for ZigBee. 2.4GHz bands are used the most commonly available wireless communication products throughout the world because of ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) band. In addition this band offers the highest achievable data rate of 250Kbps and 16 channels between 2.4GHz and 2.4835GHz at the physical layer. Typical transmission distances are within the range from 30 meters in an indoor non-line of sight environment to over 100 meters in a line of sight environment. But problems related a range can be solved through applying routing algorithm at the network layer.

Zigbee

RS232

PC

Figure 4. System hardware basic building blocks.

TABLE II. SENSOR ARRAY SPECIFICATION

Sensor Resolution (ppm) Resp. time (t90)(s) Op. range (ppm) Operating life (yrs) Diameter (mm)

CO2 < 1.5 < 60 0-10000 >2 20

NO2 < 0.02 < 60 0-20 >2 20

SO2 < 0.1 < 25 0-20 >2 20

Figure 3. Frequency bands for ZigBee Although defined as 25mW in the world, transmit output power of ZigBee is limited within 10mW. Therefore ZigBee modules employ dipole type antenna to increase gain of antenna. IV. HARDWARE ARCHITECTURE The proposed system is designed by integrating the following hardware modules shown in Fig. 4. As the figure shows, the system consists of a PIC16F877A microcontroller integrated with a sensor array using analog ports. The hardware unit is also connected to a GPS module and a Zigbee-Modem using the RS-232 interface. Each of these components is described in the following.

A. PIC16F877A microcontroller The PIC16F877A microcontroller is the main component of a pollution detection unit [10]. The operating system that runs inside the chip coordinates the substances measurement process, the acquisition of the GPS coordinates and the data transmission to the central server [11]. The microcontroller is mounted on a development board that provides an RS232 serial communication to the Zigbee modem and GPS receiver and a parallel connection to the gas sensors. The connection between the gas sensors and the PIC16F877A microcontroller cant be made directly because of the very small output voltages provided by the sensors (mA).This problem is solved by using auxiliary electronic circuits for signal conversion like OA (Operational Amplifiers) and transistors.

ISBN 978-1-4675-2248-9 2012 Published by Coimbatore Institute of Information Technology

International Conference on Computing and Control Engineering (ICCCE 2012), 12 & 13 April, 2012
B. Sensors Array The sensor array consists of three air pollutions sensors including Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) [10]. As Table II shows, the resolution of these sensors is sufficient for pollution monitoring. Each of the above sensors has a linear current output in the range of 4 mA20 mA. The 4 mA output corresponds to zero-level gas and the 20 mA corresponds to the maximum gas level. A simple signal conditioning circuit is designed to convert the 4 mA20 mA range into 05 V to be compatible with the voltage range of the built-in analog-todigital converter in the PIC microcontroller. C. GPS Reciever The GPS module provides the physical coordinate location of the mobile-DAQ, time and date in National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) format [11]. NEMA format includes the complete position, velocity, and time computed by a GPS receiver where the position is given in latitude and longitude [12]. The data packet from the GPS-Module includes an RMS Header followed by UTC time, data validity checksum, latitude, longitude, velocity, heading, date, magnetic variation and direction, mode, and checksum. The only information required for the proposed system is date, time, latitude and longitude. The GPS modem is interfaced with the microcontroller using the RS-232 communication standard. D. Zigbee Modules In this paper, two types ZigBee modules are used to organize a network for air pollution monitoring system. The network is controlled by devices called the ZigBee coordinator modem(ZCM). The ZCMs are responsible for collecting data and maintaining the other devices on the network, and all other devices, known as Zigbee end devices(ZED), directly communicate with the ZCM. The ZigBee module is hardware platform of wireless device. The modules realize the basic function of Physical and MAC layer, such as transmit and receive, modulation and demodulation, channel and power control. They operate at 2.4GHz frequency ISM band wireless communication. The modules include a digital direct sequence spread spectrum base band modem and an effective data rate of 250 kbps. They employ the EM2420 2.4GHz radio frequency transceiver and the ATMEL 8-bit AVR microcontroller. They also exhibit a nominal transmit of -1.5dBm and a receive sensitivity of -92dBm When powered at 3.0V, the modules draw 31.0mA in transmit mode and 28mA in receive mode. When the entire module is in sleep mode, the current draw is reduced to approximately 10uA. E. Central Server The Central-Server is an off-the-shelf standard personal computer with accessibility to the Internet. The PollutionServer is connected to the Zigbee-Modem via RS-232 communication standard. The air pollution information sent from each ZED are collected to ZCM. And then the data are saved to database of central server.
Figure 5. Block diagram of ZigBee module

Clients such as the municipality, environmental protection agencies, travel agencies, insurance companies and tourist companies can connect to the Central-Server through the Internet and check the real-time air pollutants level using a normal browser on a standard PC or a mobile device. The Pollution- Server can be physically located at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or similar government agencies. V. CONCLUSION The main purpose of this paper is that to introduce a new method for air pollution monitoring. This paper describes implementation of the air pollution monitoring system using ZigBee technologies and embedded system. The system utilizes public vehicle to collect pollutant gases such as CO, NO2, and SO2. The pollution data from various mobile sensor arrays is transmitted to a central server that makes this data available on the Internet. The data shows the pollutant levels and their conformance to local air quality standards. We plan in the future to implement this kind of system in the air pollution monitoring presented here. REFERENCES
[1] M.de Boer, Facing the Air Pollution Agenda for the 21st Century,in Air Pollution in the 21st Century,Priority Issues and Policy, T. Schneider, Elsevier Science B.V.:Netherland,1998,pp.3-8. N.D. van Egmond, Historical Perspective and Future Outlook,in Air Pollution in the 21st Century,Priority Issues and Policy, T. Schneider, Elsevier Science B.V.:Netherland,1998,pp.35-46. http://www.epa.gov/OCEPAterms/pterms.html,EPA Website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution,Wikipedia. http://www.epa.gov/OCEPAterms/aterms.html ,EPA Website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution,Wikipedia. ZHANG Qian,YANG Xiang-long,ZHOU Yi-ming,WANG Li-ren, GUO Xi-shan, A wireless solution for greenhouse monitoring and control system based on ZigBee technology, J Zhejiang Univ Sci A, vol.8,2007,pp:1584-1587. Jong-Won Kwon,Yong-Man Park, Sang-Jun Koo, Hiesik Kim, Design of Air Pollution Monitoring System Using ZigBee Networks for Ubiquitous-City,in Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Convergence Information Technology, Vol. 00,2007,pp. 1024-1031. GENG Jun-tao, An Atmosphere Environment Monitor System Based on Wireless Sensor Network, Journal of XIHUA university, vol. 26, April,2007, pp.47-51.

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International Conference on Computing and Control Engineering (ICCCE 2012), 12 & 13 April, 2012
[10] N. Kularatna and B. H. Sudantha, An environmental air pollution monitoring system based on the IEEE 1451 standard for low cost requirements, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 8, pp. 415422, Apr. 2008. [11] Y. J. Jung, Y. K. Lee, D. G. Lee, K. H. Ryu, and S. Nittel, Air pollutio monitoring system based on geosensor network, in Proc. IEEE Int. Geoscience Remote Sensing Symp., 2008, vol. 3, pp. 13701373. [12] W. Chung and C. H. Yang, Remote monitoring system with wireless sensors module for room environment, Sens. Actuators B, vol. 113 no. 1, pp. 3542, 2009. [13] M. Predko, Programming and Customizing PICmicro Microcontrollers, Mc Graw Hill, 2002 [14] P.N. Borza, C. Gerigan, P. Ogruan, Ghe. Toace, Microcontrollers Applications (in Romanian), Ed. Tehnic, Bucuresti, Romania, 2000. [15] O. Hyncica, The ZigBee Experience. [16] Y W Zhu,The Design of Wireless Sensor Network System Based on ZigBee Technology for Greenhouse, 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd, pp1195~1199 [17] ZigBee Alliance, ZigBee-Specification [18] National Marine Electronics Association Data. [Online]. Available: http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm

ISBN 978-1-4675-2248-9 2012 Published by Coimbatore Institute of Information Technology