Towards Sustainable Mobility Through Smart Pollution Monitoring: The BME Sensor Case Study

Smart and low-power sensors can provide a solution to challenges and opportunities associated with improving urban air quality. Distributed and real-time monitoring solutions could address the persistent problem of air pollution of traffic-congested urban areas. This work analyzes the Bosch BME688 sensor performance in varying environmental conditions as a solution addressed and fill the gap in real-time distributed measurement for outdoor air quality monitoring. If applied to smart mobility solutions, in addition to providing a mobile and distributed measurement system for real-time air-quality feedback to individuals and authorities, this sensor could support dynamic interventions, such as adjusting the assist levels of electric bikes based on local pollution. With the use of custom designed characterization systems, a preliminary characterization of this sensor exposed to a mixture of pure air and nitrogen dioxide under different environmental conditions has been carried out. Laboratory experiments have highlighted the need for further investigation in sensor performance, particularly as they relate to external factors like humidity and temperature.