Active Self-Testing Noise Measurement Sensors for Large-Scale Environmental Sensor Networks

作者：Dominguez Federico^*; Nguyen The Cuong; Reinoso Felipe; Touhafi Abdellah; Steenhaut Kris

来源：Sensors, 2013, 13(12): 17241-17264.

DOI：10.3390/s131217241

• sensor testing
• quality assessment
• environmental monitoring

Large-scale noise pollution sensor networks consist of hundreds of spatially distributed microphones that measure environmental noise. These networks provide historical and real-time environmental data to citizens and decision makers and are therefore a key technology to steer environmental policy. However, the high cost of certified environmental microphone sensors render large-scale environmental networks prohibitively expensive. Several environmental network projects have started using off-the-shelf low-cost microphone sensors to reduce their costs, but these sensors have higher failure rates and produce lower quality data. To offset this disadvantage, we developed a low-cost noise sensor that actively checks its condition and indirectly the integrity of the data it produces. The main design concept is to embed a 13 mm speaker in the noise sensor casing and, by regularly scheduling a frequency sweep, estimate the evolution of the microphone%26apos;s frequency response over time. This paper presents our noise sensor%26apos;s hardware and software design together with the results of a test deployment in a large-scale environmental network in Belgium. Our middle-range-value sensor (around Euro50) effectively detected all experienced malfunctions, in laboratory tests and outdoor deployments, with a few false positives. Future improvements could further lower the cost of our sensor below Euro10.

• 出版日期2013-12