Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations

Volume 5 Issue 3

Vehicular Pollution Monitoring System Using IoT

Joseph Mathew Skaria Maliyekal1*, Shancy Elizabeth Shaji1, Vandana H1, Divya R S2
1
Student, 2Assistant Professor
Department of Electronics and Communication, Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Kanjirappally,
Kerala, India
Email: *jitojoseph333@gmail.com
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3570505

Abstract
Pollution is an ever-sustaining environmental issue in today’s world. Automobile emission
being the major contributor to pollution, this system can be considered as a control measure.
This system focusses on developing a vehicular pollution monitoring system based on the
Internet of Things (IoT). The amount of pollution emitted by the vehicles can be measured
with the help of sensors interfaced to Arduino. If the sensed value goes beyond the threshold
value set in the program then automatically an alert message as a warning will be sent to the
vehicle owner two or three times and if they are reluctant to correct it, the message will be
forwarded to the authorities. These data are finally stored in a cloud for future analysis. The
main objective is to develop an innovative and time-saving system, thereby proposing a
solution for environmental pollution.

Keywords: Internet of things, MQ sensors, vehicular pollution monitoring, Wi-Fi module

INTRODUCTION compulsory for all vehicles in Indian roads.

Nowadays, pollution is one of the major
problems in the world. One of the major
contributors to pollution is from vehicle
emissions. Emissions that are released
directly from the cars and trucks are the
primary source of vehicular pollution.
Motor vehicles also pollute the air during
the processes of manufacturing, refueling,
and from the emissions associated with oil
refining. BS are emission standards by the
Government of India to regulate the output
of air pollutants from combustion engine
equipment, motor vehicle. To control the
pollution exhausted by vehicles, the
amount of air pollution is needed to be
calculated, and vehicle causing pollution
must be identified. Internet of Things may
become helpful in cities for monitoring air
pollution from vehicles and the amount of
pollution can be gathered and analyzed.
This system is specially designed to
operate the system using a sensor network
and gather information about pollutant
levels discharged by the vehicles. To
control the emission from the vehicle the
Government has implemented a PUC
certification. PUC Certification is
It is to ensure that the vehicle is under the
norms of pollution. The validity of the
certificate is 6 months. After that, we must
take a new certificate. To overcome this
problem, our proposed system has an
inbuilt system inside the vehicle that
checks the continuous emission values.
This paper proposes a framework for
collecting real- time data from sensors
using IoT. The paper is organized into five
sections: section 2 is about literature
survey and related works, section 3 is the
proposed system, section 4 is the
experimental setup, and section 5
experimental results and section 6
concludes the paper.
LITERATURE SURVEY AND
RELATED WORKS
In the literature survey conducted, there
are different approaches developed for
monitoring vehicular pollution. For
instance, in paper Rushikesh et al. [1] the
concept talking about is to control the
pollution level with the help of MQ
sensors, RFID and Arduino. If the

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 Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations
pollution level is above the threshold the
authorities will be informed about it. The
microcontroller then reads the level and it
will be sent to the vehicle owner and to the
server for future analysis.
In paper Manna et al. [2] the high traffic
area is selected to monitor the pollution
level with the help of RFID placed at a
short fixed distance along with the sensor
nodes at the roadside. The tag number of
the vehicle is identified by an RFID reader
and is transmitted to the server. When the
sensor level is high than the threshold, a
message is sent to the owner. According to
Priyanka et al. [3], the sensors are placed at
the outlets of the vehicles and the output of
it is given to the input of Arduino and if
beyond the threshold value, the
information is sent through GSM to IBM
Watson IoT platform. The data collected
from each of the vehicles are viewed by
logging in using user credentials on the
dashboard. Considering Pavani et al. [4],
the gas sensor used for checking the
pollution level is the TGS4161 electrolyte
carbon dioxide sensor which needs to be
calibrated by exposing them to several
concentrations of gas and each sensor
output is then plotted accordingly.
The goal of Rahman et al. [5] is to
interface the output from the sensors used
with the online development environment
ThingSpeak. The signal inputs include
Figure 1: Block diagram.
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Volume 5 Issue 3
temperature variations, sound,
potentiometer readings and so on. It
represents the output data as a graphical
format as well as in an excel sheet.
PROPOSED SYSTEM
In the proposed system, a smart
monitoring system is used for monitoring
the emissions from the vehicles. Two
sensors are used to collect the data from
the exhaust of the vehicles. The sensors
are connected to the input pin of Arduino
and the values are sensed. A threshold is
set in the Arduino. If the sensed data goes
above the threshold, a warning message is
given to the owner using GSM. Two or
more warning messages are given with
some delays. If the owner reluctant to
correct it, or to decrease the pollution from
the vehicle, the data are transferred to the
authority through GSM. The data are
stored in a cloud by ThingSpeak for future
analysis. By using this system, the owner
can analyze the emission level of his
vehicle. Authorities can take appropriate
actions accordingly.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The block diagram of the experimental
setup is shown in Fig. 1. The proposed
system is divided into two parts; (1)
hardware implementation and (2) software
implementation
 Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations
Volume 5 Issue 3

Hardware Implementation MQ Sensors

The hardware of the pollution monitoring
system consists of an Arduino board, MQ
sensors, GSM module, and Wi-Fi module.
Arduino Board
Arduino is a hardware source platform.
Like other programmable circuit boards,
Arduino does not have a separate piece of
hardware. The Software of Arduino uses a
simplified version of C++, it provides an
easier environment for doing projects.
Atmega328 is the microcontroller used in
Arduino. It is low power and high-
performance microcontroller used to read
and control the data from sensors. It has 14
digital input/output pins, 6 analog inputs,
and a reset button. The Arduino can be
powered through a USB connection of 5V.
Fig. 2 shows an Arduino Board.
Two MQ sensors are used, MQ 7 to sense
Carbon Monoxide and MQ135 is to sense
air quality. It is simple and widely used gas
sensors because of its complexity. There is
a wide range of sensors available to detect
a specific gas like Methane, N Ox, Sox,
LPG, CNG, Carbon Monoxide and
Alcohol. It has a 4 pin interface: 5V, GND,
DOUT (Digital Output) and AOUT
(Analog Output) applications MQ 135 is
used in air quality monitoring, detection of
harmful gases, domestic air pollution.
The sensor layer of the sensor is made up
of Tin dioxide (SnO2); it has lower
conductivity compare to clean air and due
to air pollution the conductivity increases.
A voltage of 5V is needed as the input of
the gas sensor. The pinout of the MQ
Sensor is shown in Fig. 3

Figure 2: Arduino board.

Figure 3: MQ sensor pinout.

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 Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations
Volume 5 Issue 3

Figure 4: GSM SIM 900.

GSM SIM 900 CDMA. It digitizes and compresses data

GSM (Global System for Mobile
communications) is a standard
developed by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute
(ETSI) to describe the protocols for
second- generation (2G) digital cellular
networks used by mobile devices such
as mobile phones and tablets. GSM
Module is shown in Fig. 4.
MQ-7 gas sensor has a high sensitivity to
Carbon Monoxide. The sensor could be
used to detect different gases contains CO.
It is with low cost and suitable for
different. In this project, GSM is used for
sending a warning message to a predefined
number written in the Arduino program.
SIM 900 model GSM is used. Global
System for Mobile Communication uses a
variety of TDMA and is the three digital
wireless technology such as TDMA,
and operates at either 900MHz or
1800MHz frequency band.
Wi-Fi Module
Arduino does not have an inbuilt Wi-Fi
system, so an external module ESP8266 is
used. The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi- Fi
microchip. It offers a complete and self-
contained Wi-Fi networking solution,
allowing it to either host the application or to
offload all Wi-Fi networking functions from
another processor. ESP8266 has powerful
onboard processing and storage capabilities.
Its high degree of on-chip integration allows
for minimal external circuitry, and the entire
solution, including the front-end module, is
designed to occupy minimal PCB area.
ESP8266 Serial Wi-Fi Wireless Transceiver
Module is suitable for Uno, Mega 2560 and
Nano.3.3V is needed for the ESP8266
module. The pinout of ESP8266 is shown in
Fig. 5.

Figure 5: ESP8266 Wi-Fi module.

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 Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations
Volume 5 Issue 3

Software Implementation ThingSpeak enables the creation of sensor

The software implementation of the proposed
system is developed using the flowchart as
shown in Fig. 7. The sensed values are shared
to a Thing Speak cloud using the Esp8266
Wi- Fi module. It is stored there. We can use
the stored data for future analysis.
ThingSpeak is an open source IoT application
and API to store and retrieve data from things
using HTTP protocol over the internet via a
Local Area Network.
logging applications, location tracking
applications, and a social network of
things with status updates. We can collect
and share data via channels in ThingSpeak.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULT
IoT based pollution monitoring system is
developed and the performance of the
developed system is verified.

Figure 6: ThingSpeak result of MQ 7 sensor.

Figure 7: Flowchart of the proposed system

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 Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations
Fig. 6 shows the result of the IoT data for
the MQ 7 Sensor. The sensed data was
successfully sent to the cloud of Thing
Figure 8: GSM output.
This project design gives a solution for
identifying pollution causing vehicles.
This system is a product in the sense that
they are of low cost and the pollution level
of any vehicle with a sensor inbuilt at the
exhaust can have its pollution status. Since
the sensors are placed at the exhaust, there
is no chance of any mixing of other
pollutions from vehicles or from the
environment, changing the actual sensor
value or working condition of the system.
CONCLUSION
This paper represents the design and
development of vehicular pollution
monitoring system using IoT. The
experimental setup has been calibrated and
the performance of the system has verified.
The developed system checks the pollution
level emitted by the vehicles and if it is
above the threshold, a warning message
will be sent to the vehicular owner using
the GSM module. These data are finally
stored in a cloud for future analysis. This
idea differs from the existing system that
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Volume 5 Issue 3
Speak. Fig. 8 shows the GSM output
cloud.
the vehicle owner gets an awareness about
the emission level without going for a
checking process. The main objective is
we will be aware of the pollution level
from the vehicles. Hence a solution for
global warming.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
First of all, we sincerely thank the
Almighty who is most beneficent and
merciful for giving us the knowledge and
courage to complete the work of our
project successfully. We also extend our
sincere thanks to the Dept. of Electronics
and Communication, Amal Jyothi College
of Engineering, Kanjirappally for their
kind support and coordination. We express
our heartfelt gratitude to Divya R S,
Internal Supervisor, for her valuable
guidance and suggestions during the
Project work. Finally, we appreciate the
patience and solid support of our parents
and enthusiastic friends for their
encouragement and moral support for this
effort.
 Journal of Communication Engineering and Its Innovations
Volume 5 Issue 3

REFERENCES Control Using Sensors and Arduino”,

1. Ramagiri Rushikesh, Chandra Mohan
Reddy Sivappagari (2015),
“Development of IoT based vehicular
pollution monitoring system”,IEEE,
(pp. 779-783).
2. Souvik Manna, Suman Sa nkar Bhunia,
Nandini Mukherjee (2014), “Vehicular
Pollution Monitoring Using loT”,
IEEE, (pp. 2214-2220).
3. R Priyanka, SK Thai Bhuvana,
Archanaa Raveendran, Dr.
R Kavitha (2017), “Vehicle Pollutants
IEEE, (pp. 480-484).
4. Movva Pavani, P Trinatha Rao (2016),
“Real Time Pollution Monitoring
Using Wireless Sensor Networks”,
IEEE, (pp. 1-6).
5. Ahmed I Abdul-Rahman, Corey A
Graves (2016), “Internet of Things
Application using Tethered MSP430 to
Thingspeak Cloud”, IEEE, (pp.- 352-
357).

39 Page 33-39 © MAT Journals 2019. All Rights Reserved