Air Quality Monitoring Platform based on Remote Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Wireless Communication

Air pollution issues and particularly fine particulate matters are worth of great concerns in a consequence of crowded factories and heavy traffics in the fast developing areas, especially in the valley terrains where pollutions are hard to disperse. Exposure to the fine particulate matters (PMs) will harm the human health and even cause irreversible damages, in the circumstances of calling for effective monitoring methods. It is necessary to bring in a monitoring platform with sufficient mobility to monitor the places where monitoring stations are not convenient to install. A mobile and portable monitoring platform based on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is developed by combining promoted sensor board and specific communication module in this paper. The monitoring flights are carried out in 30 days with 20 minutes efficient monitoring time for each flight in the ambient airspace around the object region, and the air components contents are gathered orderly to the air sensor board and send to the ground station constantly. The result shows a larger air quality index (AQI) differences exist between the fixed station and UAV monitoring where the AQI sharply changes relatively to the previous day, which signifies a large atmospheric-flow and dynamical change of air component contents. Moreover, the air quality of a dynamic monitored area formed by the further application of UAV-platform will generate critical information to the controlling of indoor air quality for the buildings in the area.