An Innovative Air Quality Monitoring System based on Drone and

IoT Enabling Technologies

L. Angrisani1 , A. Amodio1 , P. Arpaia1 , M. Asciolla2 , A. Bellizzi1 , F. Bonavolontà1 ,

R. Carbone1 , E. Caputo1 , G. Karamanolis1 , V. Martire1 , M. Marvaso1 , R. Peirce1 , A. Picardi1 ,
G. Termo1 , A. M. Toni1 , G. Viola1 , and A. Zimmaro.1
1
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
2
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

Abstract—In recent years, the focus on environmental pollution

has increased. The need arose to monitor air quality not only
in town but also in remote and inaccessible areas. The solution
proposed in this article is a low-cost remote monitoring system of
dangerous areas based on drones. On the one hand, an operator
positions the drone where measurements need to be taken. On the
other hand there is a central station that performs the storing of
the measurements, processes the data and sends them to the
web application. A monitoring system based on LoRa (Long
Range), a low-power wireless technology covering long distances,
was mounted on the drone. The sensors have been chosen to
be reliable while keeping low-cost. The microcontroller used for
system management is STM32L073RZ from ST Microelectronics.
Communication to the central station is via the MQTT protocol.
This system allows the monitoring of air quality showing accurate Fig. 1. In the photo: the drone prepared with its payload during the flight
and real time results on the web application. tests.
Index Terms—air quality, monitoring, drone, MQTT, LoRa,
LoRaWAN, IoT
all the features of the system will be presented, starting from
I. INTRODUCTION the measurement equipment placed on the drone, up to the
monitoring station, which will allow the players involved to
In the past, pollution has always been an underestimated extract all the information needed to guide their decisions.
problem despite its considerable importance in everyone’s
life. Today there seems to be an awareness, thanks to the
2018 UN-IPCC report in Incheon (Republic of Korea) which II. C HOICE OF THE VECTOR AND DEFINITION OF THE
has predicted a temperature rise of 1.5 ◦ C by 2030 [1]. PAYLOAD
Furthermore, the increase in fires, in landfills and polluted
areas has led to the need for constant monitoring of pollutants The target scenario is an unreachable place for a human
in the air, in the ground and in water. The impossibility of operator because of exposure to harmful substances, so the
sending staff to monitor large areas in contexts of risk for the measurement has to be conducted by a vector [3].
health of operators has led to the study of alternative solutions. The drone activity and the flight mission require that the
In this context, this document aims to demonstrate and testify vector hover in a given place for a given amount of time
that it is possible to conceive a system for telemonitoring air in order to acquire the data [4]. To this aim, it is worth
quality based on drones. The use of drone swarms for the noting the need of bias compensation of drone’s inertial
telemonitoring of air quality allows access to dangerous or measurement units [5],[6]. Considering that small dimensions
disastrous area, since all the equipment is placed on the drone are desired for portability and costs reasons, the most suitable
and operators can stay out side of the risk zone [2]. In the choice is a drone. Specifically, the flight tests have been
event of measurements values above the safety threshold, the conducted on the DJI F550 kit [7], that it is shown in Fig. 1.
use of microcontrollers allows for a first analysis of the data
and for prompt alert notifications to the operator. In the long It is known that a drone will show its best performances if
term, one could also think of swarms of automated drones these conditions are met [8]:
piloted from a control center but this does not concern the • The weight of the payload is the lowest possible;
system presented in this article. Various parts of the project • The masses of the payload are distributed in a manner that
will be described below, providing some theoretical hints cause the minimum alteration of the moment of inertia
that are propaedeutic to their understanding. In this article of the drone;

978-1-7281-3611-0/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

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 • The center of mass of the payload is aligned to the
center of mass of the drone along the vertical direction.
The drone’s payload is composed by a whole set of instru-
mentation for the measurement of pollution indicators and it
includes:
• Electronic devices (boards and transducers),
• Electric battery (i.e. a power-bank),
• Electrical connections,
• External box.
Due to time, costs, manufacturing simplicity and availability
of tools, the construction of the external box is made via
FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) method of 3D printing
technology. Since one of the desired requirements of the
external box is rigidity, PLA (Polylactic Acid) with 20% of
infill factor was chosen for a first realization of the prototype.
Aerodynamic loads are relevant only at high speed. So the
improvement on the shape of the box was achieved by
maintaining a flat face on the bottom (due to mechanical
joints) and by adding rounded edges between the points of
contact of the top faces. In this manner the flow around the
box can produce less drag force that could be relevant at high
speed since it depends from the square of velocity.
The flammability of the material and its capabilities to
shield against fire could be interesting properties to consider,
especially because electronic devices and batteries in case
of high temperatures could be damaged to the point of
explosion. However the drone that has to carry the payload
does not have to fly through fire so these properties, even if
taken in consideration, are desired but not mandatory.
The hermetic closure is not a requirement for the system
for two reasons. The first and the most important reason is
that the electronic sensors are able to evaluate the presence
of particle matters (PM) only when in contact with the air
itself. A continuous re-circulation of the air through the box
is necessary to guaranty good measurements. The second
reason is related to the dissipation of heat of the electronic
devices through a mechanism of convection.
No studies have been conducted on electromagnetic shielding,
i.e. the reduction of the electromagnetic field in a space by
blocking it with barriers made of conductive or magnetic
materials, because the topic is too complex for this system.
Some of the electronic devices could benefit from shielding
to work better, but other devices could not work properly
because they could not receive the signal (for instance the
GPS receiver).
The total weight of the payload is 391 g and the dimensions
of the whole box is 10x10x8 cm3 [LxWxH] with 3 mm of
thickness. Further structural analyses and functional studies
can be conducted in order to achieve a better shape for a
smaller and lighter solution.
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III. S ENSOR N ODE
A sensor node has been realized, taking in to account the
reduced weight, size and power dissipation specifications.
any application to be mounted on a drone requires the above
mention specifications which in turn must be congruent with
the IoT paradigms [9] -[12].
After a careful study on the main air pollutants, the
measurands of interest that have been chosen are PM, CO,
NH3 , NO2 , VOC, CO2 and, due to the correlation between
these measurands and environmental conditions, temperature,
atmospheric pressure and relative humidity are measured as
well. Furthermore, the GPS coordinates are acquired in order
to locate the measurements taken.
After careful market research, aimed at creating a prototype
that maximizes the performance-cost ratio, the following
components were selected:
• Nucleo STM32L073RZ, which features an ARM M0 +
processor, developed for Low-Power applications;
• Semtech SX1272MB2xAS, a transceiver which, using
the LoRa protocol, allows long-range communications
[13];
• Sensirion SPS30, that has a measurement chamber in
which, using an Optical Particles Counter (OPC), is able
to quantify PM10, PM4, PM2.5 and PM1. Moreover it
has a forced ventilation system to clean the chamber;
• Adafruit BME280, which provides measurements of
temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure;
• Seeed Studio VOC and CO Sensor, based on the
SENSIRION SPG30, provides measurements of Volatile
Organic Compound (VOC) and CO2 ;
• Seed Multichannel Gas Sensor, based on MiCS-6814
produced by SGX Sensortech, it provides measurements
of CO, NOx and NHx ;
• Goouuu Tech GT-U7, based on NEO-6M by U-blox
which returns GPS coordinates and altitude.
The firmware is based on a finite state machine, for managing
the measurement and data transmission phases via the LoRa
protocol. The machine states are:
• READY: in this phase the Join with the LoRa Gateway
is checked and repeated if needed. Subsequently the GPS
position of the drone is sent at intervals of 5s;
• MEASURING: this phase starts when the START is
received from the Web Application. The first operations
are the ventilation of the measuring chamber of the
SPS30 and the start of measurement process by the VOC-
Sensor. After the 15 s required for these operations, 32
measurements for each measurand are acquired. Finally,
average and composed accuracy (using standard deviation
and manufacturer’s accuracy) of the 32 measures are
calculated.
• SEND-MEASURE: in this phase, after the status of
MEASURING, the packaging and transmission of data
 Fig. 2. How the Communication Node works.
via the LoRa protocol are managed.
In the design of the machine, safety features have been
implemented to avoid locking the node in the event of sensor
or connection failures [14].
IV. C OMMUNICATION N ODE
The aim of the communication node is receiving a start
command of starting measurements from the central software
station and sending it to the drone [15]. Moreover, the pay-
load coming from transducer nodes on the drone has to be
sent to the central station (Fig. 2). The payload, containing
measurements, is routed to a LoRa gateway; using Node-Red,
the payload is parsed to JSON, then sent to the central by
publishing on a MQTT topic [16]. If the measurement values
exceed the safety thresholds, an alert message is sent to a
chat-bot of an instant messaging application.
A. LoRa
LoRa (Long Range) is a spread spectrum modulation tech-
nique derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology
[17]. LoraWAN is a protocol that operates in a free sub-GHz
band, the ISM Band [18]. The targets are M2M connection
(Machine to Machine) and IoT applications; this is a part
of LPWAN (Low Power Area Network), that provides an
energy-saving feature for sending and receiving messages.
The range of communication is quantifiable in the order of
kilometers [19]. We have chosen an operating mode (Class C)
that provides a continuous listening.
B. Node-Red
Node-Red is a tool to make IoT applications through the
usage of nodes in JavaScript. The nodes are connected to each
other in order to create a flow, input and output are defined
using a graphical interface. The nodes receive messages in
input and apply a JavaScript function in order to modify
content or type.
C. MQTT
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a com-
munication protocol designed for M2M, based on pub-
lish/subscribe model. It works on top of the stack TCP/IP.
The broker provides the distribution of messages to clients,
using topics. Clients subscribe to a chosen topic and receive
all the messages published on it; this way, a one-to-many
communication model is established, in place of a one-to-one
model.
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Fig. 3. The flow used in NodeRed.
D. Functional principle
The goal of the project is to establish a communication
bridge between the drone and the central software station to
perform measurements on request. The drone carries a LoRa
module, that communicates with the nearest LoRa Gateway.
The Gateway performs the protocol conversion from LoRa
to MQTT, so the payload can be read by a web server
subscribed to a specific topic. All operations are performed
on the Gateway by the NodeRed Flow we have created (Fig.
3). Specifically, the functionalities needed for the project are
the following:
• Join-ACK: To initiate a secure communication between
the gateway and the drone, a mechanism of Join / Accept
Request is implemented.
• Start Command: From the dashboard (UI), a command
on a MQTT topic is sent to activate the measurement
routine. This message is read by the flow on the same
topic, converted in a LoRa packet and sent to the drone.
• Drone-To-Central communication: Once a start
message is received and the drone has created a
measurement set, a LoRa packet is transmitted to the
Gateway. Here the payload is parsed in a JSON file by a
function block of NodeRed. Depending on the fields of
control, a switch block divides and publishes messages
in two different topics: one for GPS data and another
for measurements. The GPS data is sent to the web
application, so the operator can see on his tablet where
the drone is. The measurements are sent to the central
station for storage purposes. This payload is matched
with the GPS data of the measuring location.
V. T HE CENTRAL SOFTWARE STATION
The central software station satisfies the following require-
ments:
1) user authentication;
2) displaying the drone position during flight;
3) transducers control;
4) filtering and storage measured data;
5) producing alerts for dangerous zones;
6) visualisation all the recorded data.
To meet these requirements, it is necessary that the station
have:
1) a parser to interpret and filter the data that comes from
the transducers;
 2) a database to store all recorded data;
3) a detector to reveal any health risks to operators;
4) a web application that has a user-friendly, captivating
and portable interface.
To promote the use of adequate replication techniques and
maximize the reliability, each component has to be designed
by bearing in mind attributes like coupling, cohesion, re-
usability and portability. Fig. 4-5 summarize the structure and
the interconnections among the various components.
A. Technologies
First of all, the parser is realised by a java application,
which is suitable for distributed software. Moreover, it offers Fig. 4. The measuring process
plenty of useful libraries and middlewares for that purpose.
For instance, Hibernate was used to solve the ORM (object-
relational mapping) problem and the MQTT library supplied
by the Eclipse Paho project was used to retrieve the measured
data from the transducers. Secondly, a relational database is
used to store and share the recorded data. The chosen RDBMS
is MySQL, which is released with an open-source license.
Thirdly, a Telegram bot is used to send adequate and fast
alerts to all parties whose actions are necessary when there
are some health risks in the area under observation. Lastly,
the web application is built on top of three main technologies:
Bootstrap, AngularJS and Google Maps. The first allows Fig. 5. The positioning process
developers to build responsive web pages to achieve portability
on different screens. The second was used in conjunction
with PHP to provide all the functionalities requested by the Nucleo, suitable for low power applications, the different
users. Specifically, AngularJS was employed for the functional transducers were managed and the data supplied by them
requirements 2,3,5,6 while PHP was used to create a software were processed. The parameters of interest were: Tempera-
level to query and update data stored in the database. The third ture, Humidity, Pressure, PM1, PM2.5, PM4, PM10, VOC,
was needed to show to operators the drone position during the CO2 , CO, NHx , NOx . These parameters are sent through the
flight. Semtech SX1272MB2xAS transceiver to the LoRa gateway
B. Functional Principle and, through the usage of the MQTT communication protocol,
made available on a web application, Fig. 6-7-8.
The web application continuously receives data from sen-
sor node and shows the position of the drone. To start
the measuring process, the operator stops the drone in the VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
position of interest and sends the ”Start” command via the
web application. After sending the ”Start”, the drone stops
Authors thank Domenico Accardo and Giancarmine Fasano
sending its location, because only the last reported location
(aerospace systems), Marco Trifuoggi (analytic chemistry), ST
(i.e. where the measurement actually takes place) is needed,
Microelectronics (technological partner), Protom Group Srl,
and the Measuring phase begins in the sensor node. After the
and Capgemini (committing companies).
conclusion of this phase, the central station receives the data
through the library functions of Eclipse Paho that supports
MQTT. The central station analyzes the data and, in case they
are above the threshold, sends an alert message to a Telegram
bot and then saves the data on the database [20]. After saving,
the web application is notified of the changes in the database,
through MQTT. The web application takes from the database
the data of interest, which will be displayed on the screen.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In conclusion, the low-energy, low-cost, drone-based mon-
itoring system is developed to perform real-time measure-
ments of pollutants. Through the usage of the STM32L073RZ Fig. 6. Examples of measures in the Dashboard

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