WSN and IoT-based Real-Time Indoor Air Quality Monitoring System for Hospital Facilities

Monitoring Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in hospitals is important due to the relatively high occupant density, commonly outdated ventilation systems, and susceptible patients. This project uses a wireless sensor network (WSN) and Internet of Things (IoT) to design a real-time IAQ monitoring system for eight environmental parameters. Additional system features include a visual web dashboard for public awareness and accessibility, and a survey answering terminal for system feedback response. To aid in sensor siting, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to provide a basic assessment of airflow in a target location. To assess the developed prototype's functionality, system characteristics including power usage, data latency, and communication ranges were measured during a 6-day pilot deployment in the laboratory. Measurements show that the system can constantly send real-time data at a low packet loss rate of 0.162% while correlation strength is moderate to strongly positive ranging from 0.4465 to 0.9922, excluding one parameter with no available reference instrument. Findings show that all system components consume on average 1W of power with the highest at 1.442 W. The visual dashboard displayed its capabilities to display real-time data during a 6-day deployment. In this prototype stage, actual user feedback data from hospitals were not gathered, however, the survey answering terminal shows proper functionality by displaying the necessary symptoms for high parameter levels.