Implementation of a prototype air quality measurement system using MEMS sensors

The paper presents an analysis of a growing technology, which is micro‐electromechanical system (MEMS) sensor technology, with an explicit, complete design and an implementation of a custom prototyping embedded system capable of air quality measurement, hazard detection and other functionalities given by the possibility of attaching additional hardware. Air pollution is becoming a major health problem that affects millions of people worldwide. In support of this observation, the World Health Organization estimates that every year, 2.4 million people die because of the effects of air pollution on health [1]. We have designed the system to be used in the automotive industry, but also to facilitate an easy integration in smart houses and smart factories. It is based on ATmega 2560 microcontroller and combines on a single printed circuit board (PCB) several MEMS sensors capable of measuring the pressure, temperature, humidity, volatile organic compound, carbon dioxide, combustible gas, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen oxide, smoke and particulate matter. Our system comes to the fore of the future users who might try to get a new perspective on the atmospheric composition in applications such as air pollution management in the city, where the data requirements of the sensor system have not been firmly established yet, and the methods of data collection are still at the beginning. An increase of system functionality can be easily achieved by using additional hardware that can be stack on the main circuit board. In this way, a display is connected to the prototype system in order to view the values in real-time. As a result, we are presenting a system capable of measuring air quality using a trending technology of MEMS, with all sensors directly mounted on the printed circuit board (PCB), with the advantage of fast respond, low price and easy integration with other systems. The experimental results were obtained by developing the module and using it to monitor the air quality in a closed space, inside of a vehicle.