In response to growing concerns around health issues arising from poor air quality in cities, imec and Holst Centre claim to have developed small, low power and high quality autonomous NO2 sensors that have low power consumption, in the mW range, can detect NO2 at less than 10ppb and wirelessly communicate with the environment and the cloud.
Air quality is typically measured in a few locations per city, with specialised equipment. Many current gas sensors are large in size, have high power consumption and are too cost prohibitive to be implemented on a large scale for Intuitive Internet of Things (I2oT) applications.
Imec and Holst Centre's NO2 sensors were tested for stability and to compare their results to those of established sensors by being integrated in the Aireas air quality network, a multiple sensor network in the city centre of Eindhoven (the Netherlands) as well as inside the Holst Centre building.
The generated data is transferred to the cloud, stored in a database and is immediately available on mobile applications. Kathleen Philips, director of imec's I2oT R&D programme, explained. "Data fusion methodology and advanced algorithms enable us to combine data from different sensors such as temperature, gasses, humidity and human presence detection to derive contextual knowledge. In this way, we have developed a context-aware intuitive sensing system."
Imec and Holst Centre have launched a programme aimed to develop the building blocks for the I2oT at the imec Technology Forum. The R&D programme aims to leverage knowledge with global partnerships to develop compact and power-efficient sensor modules, future wireless connectivity and flexible integration technologies. An integral part of the programme will also focus on the development of early I2oT demonstrators and applications while dealing with the heterogeneity of networks, data fusion and light weight security and authentication aspects.
Author
Tom Austin-Morgan
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk