In the last decade, pollution by particulate matter and its effect on human health has increasingly becoming the focus of public attention. In order to monitor and evaluate particulate pollution, expensive measuring stations were placed at traffic hotspots and other selected locations. The measuring devices often precisely record the particle concentration, but have disadvantages in mobility and for measurements in large-area due to their size and investment costs. A measurement with high temporal and spatial resolution is not possible with these stations.
This paper presents a new type of mobile particulate sensor based on the Plantower PMS 7003 particle sensor. In addition to the Plantower sensor, a rechargeable battery and newly developed control electronics are also installed in the particulate sensor. Due to the small size and the low manufacturing costs of the measuring system, mobile usage in higher quantity is possible. In addition, the system can record the geographical position and thus link GPS information with the particle concentration. Humidity and temperature sensors are also used to correlate the measurement data with the current weather at the respective position. To process the large data volumes of the individual sensors, a database structure was developed with a centralized storage unit for those data. If the sensor is within the radio range of a selected WIFI network, the data is automatically uploaded to this database and processed. The functionality of the new measuring system is demonstrated using various examples.