ICTON 2018 Mo.C5.

Deployment of Air Quality Monitoring Sensors over a Delay

Tolerant Mobile Ad-Hoc Network in Public Transportation
Systems
R. Asorey-Cacheda1, A. J. Garcia-Sanchez2, C. Zúñiga-Cañón3, P. Marco-Jornet2,
P. A. Moreno-Riquelme2, and J. Garcia-Haro2
1
Centro Universitario de la Defensa (University of Vigo), Escuela Naval Militar,
Plaza de España, s/n, 36920 Marín, Spain
2
Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT),
ETSIT, Campus Muralla del Mar 1, 30202 Cartagena, Spain
3
Research Group COMBA I+D, Santiago de Cali University, Cali, Colombia
ABSTRACT
Poor air quality in urban environments is one of the major problems of modern cities. This paper presents
a crowd-sensing approach that leverages the mobility of public transportation to monitor air quality in different
inner-city areas over the course of a day. To meet this objective, we present a system architecture for the
compilation of environmental data using low-cost mobile sensor devices equipped in public transport vehicles.
Thus, the network topology has been designed to be robust and reliable, tackling connectivity problems through
the use of delay-tolerant networks and Bluetooth ad-hoc gateways, and to be flexible, dealing with changing
topologies through the use of mobile ad-hoc networks. The tests carried out in the public transportation of
Cartagena (Spain) show the feasibility of the proposed architecture for this vehicle to infrastructure service and
the effectiveness of deploying a mobile measurement system instead of fixed stations, which is the usual solution
for many smart cities.
Keywords: air quality, DTN, MANET, crowdsensing, vehicular networks, V2I services, transportation systems.

1. INTRODUCTION
Environmental pollution is an increasingly important problem related to climate change that gives rise to serious
concern within civil society. This reality is a challenge when modeling urban environments, which demands
solutions that mitigate the impact of climate change through the empowerment of society, where the citizen has
an active role and collaborative participation.
Crowdsensing [1] is based on the power of the crowd jointly with the sensing capabilities of mobile or
wearable devices. Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) [2] is a communication model that allows vehicles to share
information with infrastructure components. This article presents a crowdsensing platform for the measurement
of air quality in urban scenarios using public transportation systems. From a hardware standpoint, it relies on
a series of portable devices equipped with sensors that collect data of public interest and transmit them to
a database for further processing. As for the communication model, the V2I paradigm is applied since the data is
gathered through public transport and delivered to fixed stations deployed at strategic points of the city.
In addition to public transport, this system can also be installed in private vehicles or even in fixed locations
which are considered suitable.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the system architecture, including hardware, software,
and network topology. In Section 3, an example of the deployment of the platform in the city of Cartagena is
presented along with some of the results obtained. Finally, Section 4 concludes.

2. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
This section introduces the architecture of the sensor network developed, defining the hardware architecture, the
network topology and communications, as well as the software architecture of the measuring devices.
2.1 Devices and Hardware Architecture
Data collection on the sensors platform relies on simple computer systems. These devices are versatile hardware
tools because of their size, functionality, and cost.
The devices selected for data acquisition are the Arduino microcontroller and the Raspberry Pi microcomputer.
Arduinos are equipped with digital and analog input / output ports, allowing the connection of sensors to
measure contamination. The Raspberry Pi offers IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth communication interfaces to
transfer data from the sensor network to the corresponding servers.
The chosen measurement values for air quality are based on pollutant criteria defined by the World Health
Organization (WHO) [3], namely carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide
(SO2), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Moreover, a spatial-temporal reference (GPS position and time), the
temperature, and the humidity are also registered. All these values are used during the data processing.

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Figure 1 shows the architecture of the environmental data collection device, illustrating the interaction between
its components and the communication interfaces of the sensor platform.

Figure 1. Architecture of the environmental data collection device.

The hardware selected to implement the complete sensor system took into account the size of the target device.
Thus, an Arduino Nano was considered to acquire analog information from the atmospheric sensors and then
digitizing it. This digital information is transmitted over the serial port to a Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless, which
has two communication interfaces to relay the information to the end platform database.
2.2 Communications and Network Topology
Sensor network topology is designed to provide communications and data delivery with the lowest possible
latency. To do this, each node has two network interfaces: an IEEE 802.11 and a Bluetooth wireless interface.
IEEE 802.11 interfaces are used to create a Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) between sensors and data
collection gateways (Fig. 2). Due to the large number of nodes that might operate, the routing algorithm chosen
for the MANET is the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) [4]. Unlike traditional routing systems for mobile
networks, OLSR is a proactive protocol that maintains existing routes and is designed to minimize the exchange
of control messages on the network. This reduces communication delay and improves network scalability as the
number of nodes increases.

Figure 2. System overview for the network topology.

The network topology is designed to include one or several data collection gateways. One of the particularities
of the topology is the possibility of adding dynamic data collection gateways through the Bluetooth interface.
This interface allows to connect a node with another Internet enabled device (e.g. a smartphone, identified in the
Fig. 2 as Bluetooth Gateway) and send the stored samples and traces directly to the servers through it.
Another peculiarity of the communications architecture is that it is not always possible to deliver data in real
time. When this occurs, the network will store the data until it can be transmitted through one of the available
gateways. This is why data transfer is achieved by using a Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) [5], which automates
the storage of data in the nodes until transmission can be performed. The use of a DTN is not strictly necessary
since the sensor data capture application could store them until they can be reliably delivered. However, in this
way the software application is freed from this task and the responsibility for storing and delivering the data to
the network is delegated. In addition, a DTN can convey the data even if there is no route to the destination.
The data sent by the sensors through the data collection gateways are then transmitted to a database which is
outside the MANET.
Finally, the volume of data sent by each node is a parameter that can be tuned. A message is of the order of
a hundred bytes (gas sensor measurements, position, time, and a hash). Although periodicity can be configured,

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an interval of 5 minutes should be enough. Therefore, even for a high number of nodes, the network should cope
with all generated traffic.
2.3 Measuring Device Software Architecture
The measurement device software architecture consists of four modules with different functionalities as it can be
observed in Fig. 3, namely

Figure 3. Measuring device software architecture.

1. Sensor data acquisition: This module is in charge of reading and storing data from the gas sensors.
2. GPS data acquisition: This module reads the position and time information from the GPS device. If this
information is not available (e.g. no GPS signal received) no other operation can be performed. Moreover,
nodes use time to synchronize their internal clocks, which is required by the DTN for its proper operation.
3. Data publisher: This module sends periodically the sensor and GPS acquired data to the DTN stack.
4. Bluetooth publisher: This module sends all the stored data in the DTN stack through a Bluetooth gateway
to the platform database. Data are only sent when requested by the Bluetooth gateway (e.g. a cell phone).
Reading data directly from the DTN has some advantages that should be considered:
• It is possible for the database to receive duplicate messages. This can be easily detected but, in order
to speed up this operation, all messages contain a hash that, in addition to detect duplicated packets
also allows to discard erroneous messages or fake information.
• If the DTN stack contains messages from other nodes they are also transmitted. Thus, the DTN adds
more flexibility to the network.
Thereby, the architecture of the designed sensor network gives the platform the ability to collect the
environmental data obtained through the developed sensing devices.

3. RESULTS
The tests were carried out in the city of Cartagena, located in south eastern Spain. A node was installed in
a vehicle that travelled through different roads of the city collecting data from the sensors. As described, when
the node is in the coverage area of a gateway, data is sent thanks to the DTN. Finally, from the gateway, the data
is finally transmitted to the end server/s to further processing and decision-making actions.
Table 1. Columns 1 and 2 show average values obtained in our campaign. Column 3 specifies the limits set by
the Council Directive 1999/30/EC. (*) Value provided by the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality,
Spain [6].
Average value
Average value (ppb/ppm) (µg/m3) Limit Value (Directive 1999/30/EC)
O3 30 ppb 60 µg/m3 240 µg/m3
CO2 480 ppm 863.46 µg/m3 550 ppm (*)
SO2 12.5 ppb 32.7 µg/m3 500 µg/m3
CO 8.06 ppm 9.23 mg/m3 10 mg/m3
NO2 202 ppb 380 µg/m3 400 µg/m3
Table 1 shows the average values for the different gases under study captured by driving along bus routes of
the city. These values were measured considering the totality of the monitored data during a period of a week (in
particular, our campaign was developed in the first week of April 2018, at the beginning of spring), which
implied a rapidly changing climate: sun, rain, and wind. In addition, each day of the campaign consisted of eight
uninterrupted hours of test and different bus routes were selected to enrich the information collected.

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The results obtained by our devices were compared against well-known and recognized national and
international studies that include healthy, dangerous, and unhealthy limits for the atmospheric pollutants
proposed in this work. In particular, Table 1 also shows the limits established by Council Directive 1999/30/EC
[7]. As can be observed, all gases analyzed were within the expected limits (the value of NO2 was close to the
allowed limit). Therefore, a priori, citizens should not worry about the quality of the air they breathe. This
statement is strengthened when our measurements were confronted with Table 2, extracted from reference [8],
which establishes the parameters of the Air Quality Index (AQI) for different gases in India. At first glance,
Table 2 highlights that NO2 gas is in the “poor” zone while CO and O3 are admissible values. Therefore, the AQI
classification is in accordance with the results obtained under the Directive 1999/30/EC.
Table 2. Air Quality Index for different gases in India.
Colour Coding AQI Range Index O3 (8h, aver. ppb) CO (8h, aver. ppm) NO2 (8h, aver. ppb)
Good 0 – 100 0 – 50 0 – 1.7 0 – 42
Moderate 101 – 200 51 – 98 1.8 – 10.3 43 – 94
Poor 201 – 300 99 – 118 10.4 – 14.7 95 – 295
Very Poor 301 – 400 119 – 392 14.8 – 30.2 296 – 667
Very Unhealthy 401 – above 393 – above 30.3 – above 660 – above

4. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a novel platform for measuring air quality in urban environments using low cost hardware
that can be easily integrated and equipped in public transportation systems.
Measurement devices have been designed to operate in a customized DTN MANET, using the V2I
communications paradigm. Optionally, they can also work by employing a Bluetooth gateway. This provides
a robust crowdsensing mechanism for compiling consistent environmental data that can help city planners and
decision-makers for the good of all our citizens.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been supported by projects: CAMoN (ref. H2020 Organicity Project –ID 645198– Open Call
2); Urb@nEcoLife (code DGI-COCEIN-No. 613-621116-D41); and AIM (ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R,
AEI/FEDER, UE).

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