Design of a wireless sensor network for urban pollution monitoring

Monitoring of air pollution is an essential element for the management of urban areas, and today it is mostly implemented using fixed stations. In this work, we examine the design of an air pollution monitoring solution based on a wireless sensor network, and present some of the issues that must be confronted by the designer. The presented implementation is based on off-the-shelf networking hardware and custom developed sensors. The final system will include a porous silicon based NO2 sensor, a solid-state, low power anemometer, and temperature sensors. Specific attention is devoted, as is essential in a wireless sensor network, to power consumption issues. It will be shown the power requirements of the sensors often dwarf those of the network connectivity, so that smart sensor sampling strategies are as important as communication strategies for proper power management