2019 IEEE Student Conference on Research and Development (SCOReD)

October 15-17, 2019, Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia

IoT Based Vehicle Emission Monitoring and Alerting System

P. Arun Mozhi Devan1 , Fawnizu Azmadi Hussin1 , Rosdiazli Ibrahim1 ,
Kishore Bingi1 and M. Nagarajapandian2

Abstract— This study was carried out to analyze the vari- on the environment. The new air quality standards in India
ations of hazardous pollutants like Carbon Monoxide (CO), to safeguard the society are tabulated in Table 1 [3]. Taxi,
Carbon Oxides (COx) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) in Tamil buses, and trucks are responsible for 72% of CO and NOx
Nadu. The major source of air pollution in urban areas mainly
in developing countries like India is due to the transportation release in the metro cities. Due to these alarming conditions
sector. Road and Transportation Office (RTO) and Central CPCB made FC renewal mandatory every year for Heavy
Pollution Control Board (CPCB) are the monitoring authorities Transport Vehicles (HTVs) and five years for Light Motor
of the emission standards. This paper measures the emissions Vehicles (LMVs). As per the regulations every vehicle has to
standards in a real-time process using various sensors namely undergo assessment to obtain Pollution Under Control (PUC)
smoke sensor which is placed at the exhaust of the vehicle.
The data collected verifies the standard limits and provides certificate for every 3 months.
information to the vehicle operator, RTO, and CPCB through
the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) and the Controlling air pollution can be achieved by monitoring
Internet of Things (IoT) for further analysis. The Indian gov- the Air Quality Index (AQI) by using the relevant sensors.
ernment provides the Fitness Certificate (FC) for every vehicle The sensor data transmission and their communication are
by monitoring its behaviour. The control strategy coding for
calculating the emitted gas limits has been done in PIC Micro- done using new techniques like IoT and Wireless Sensor
controller which analyzes the data and yields the statistics Network (WSN) which paved the way to get real-time and
which are then compared with the standard values. Drivers and more reliable information. The most alarming conditions
nearby control stations are provided with continuous feedback occur when the vehicle emission exceeds the standard limits
and warnings if the limits are exceeded. The Gas sensor is that can be found by improvising the way of sensing the
installed in the proposed control system by indicating the values
provided in the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). individual vehicle outflow. For the process of monitoring the
Keywords: IoT, PIC controller, Gas Sensor, Vehicle Emission, AQI, it is essential to have an accurate mobile and stationary
GSM. sensing units, using which the metro corporation will make
the laws more stringent on emissions in order to reduce them.
I. INTRODUCTION
The high level of air-pollution in urban areas, caused in no Meanwhile the use of e-vehicles in different European
small extent by road transport, requires the implementation of countries, especially Norway and Austria analyses and un-
continuous and accurate monitoring techniques if emissions derstands the factors influencing the competitiveness of e-
are to be minimized. One fifth of the total emissions of toxic vehicles and socio-economic aspects. They are also foisting
gases CO, COx, and NOx in the atmosphere is the only the emission laws as a serious condition and conducting
primary cause which is contributed by road transport in India. awareness campaigns. Even though the revenue effects of e-
Observing the emissions and implementing short and long vehicle is insignificant in the long run, the cost of elevating
term mitigation measures to prevent pollution in cities are a new technology in to the market is important [4]. On
required [1]. Adverse health effects, including asthma, eye the other hand in developing countries like India, Brazil
irritation, lung disorders and consequences of fertility are the and South Africa are mostly depending on fossil fuels for
acute and chronic outcomes of traffic related air-pollution. transportation and domestic applications. In these countries,
The population living in growing urban areas have increased emission certificate is provided when a new vehicle is
risk of health outcomes [2]. purchased but the renewal of it is ignored by most of the
The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act was citizens [5]. This paper focuses on the development of field
enacted in 1981 and amended in 1987 to provide for the instruments as a solution to spread attentiveness in each and
prevention, control and abatement of air pollution in In- every individual. The presented prototype in this paper which
dia. Presently the government has regulated new emission comprises of micro-controller and the sensor to evaluate the
norms for monitoring the air-pollution and resulting data vehicle emissions and communicate through GSM and to
provides an opportunity to minimize the dreadful effects alert the government for tracking the AQI is manifested.

1 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II
Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia. is dedicated to the related works on emission monitoring
[email protected], {fawnizu, rosdiazli, systems. The proposed system is presented in Section III.
bingi.sai g03426}@utp.edu.my
2 Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College,Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. The results and discussions are given in Section IV followed
[email protected] by conclusion in Section V.

978-1-7281-2613-5/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 161

 TABLE I
E MISSION S TANDARDS IN I NDIA

CO (g/km) HC+ NOx (g/km) PM (g/kwhr) Diesel Vehicles

Year Norms
HC NOx
Passenger cars Diesel vehicles 2/3 wheeler Passenger cars 2/3 wheeler Diesel vehicles
(g/kmhr) (g/kmhr)
1991 - 14.3 - 27.1 14 12 - 30 2.0 (Only HC) 8-12 (only HC) - 3.5 18
1996 8.68 - 12.40 11.2 4.5 3.00-4.36 3.6 - 2.4 14.4
1998 4.34 - 6.20 - - 1.50-2.18 - - - -
India stage -
2000 2.72 4.5 2.0 0.97 2.0 0.36 1.1 8.0
2000 norms
2008 BS - II 2.2 4.0 1.6 0.5 1.5 0.15 1.1 7.0
BS - III 2.3 2.1 1.0 0.35 1.0 0.10 1.6 5.0
2010
BS - IV 1.0 1.5 - 0.18 - 0.02 0.96 3.5

II. RELATED WORKS

The increase in CO2 level is predominantly irreversible,
even after the emission are eliminated for 1000 years. Among
these irreversible impacts there is a reduction in rainfall and
high heat waves leads to the formation of ‘dust bowl’ condi-
tions in several regions over the century. The drastic growth
in CO2 concentration caused the atmospheric temperature
raise up to 3.2◦ C which generated thermal expansion of
oceans causing the sea level to rise from 0.4 to 1.0 meters.
Because of these harsh conditions, several places around
the globe will face very less precipitation, high heat waves
leading to the formation of ‘dust bowl’ conditions [6].
A vehicle monitoring system using on board IoT was Fig. 1. CO2 Emissions by sectors
successfully implemented to gather data from two different
driving patterns specifically deceleration and speed according
to slope of the road. It was found that the emission of on flat route is averagely 15% to 20% higher than that of
CO2 was consistently lower in the vehicle whose engine hilly routes[10] and [11]. Meanwhile, fuel consumption and
oil was changed frequently compared to the other vehicle. emissions are compared using different driving patterns like
The increase and decrease of CO2 discharge depends on the sudden acceleration, sudden breaking and running the vehicle
speed of the vehicle. Hence there is a good opportunity for in idle condition which have a strong impact in emission. It
identifying the CO2 emissions based on interval of changing has been estimated that fuel can be saved up to 19% for
the engine oil and the frequency are significantly provided manual vehicles and 7% for an automatic ones [12].
[7]. To react to the climate change, United Nations Frame- As reported in [13], [14], [15] and [16] the transportation
work Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conducts sector was the primary reason for the air pollution in various
the global summit to make the developing and developed countries. For this problem, most of the countries deployed
countries to cut down their emissions by minimum of 5% the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to know the most
so that the global climate change will stay under 2◦ C, to polluted roads and the areas to identify the different effective
avoid severe global climate change in forthcoming years. In measures to reduce the suspended particulate matters, toxic
reaction to this in 2015 Philippines announced in Intended gas emissions which are causing serious health concerns.
Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) to cut down Since a lot of sensors and data communication is involved
their entire emissions in 2030 by reducing the utilization of to monitor the air quality, Khedo et al [11] uses WSN with a
fossil fuels for energy, transportation, industry, and domestic hierarchy routing protocol to gather the different motes data
needs [8]. and identifies the duplicated data, distorted data, and noise
About 77% of emissions come from only 3 sectors namely data which is then it will aggregated to make simple data for
energy, manufacturing and transportation in India given in processing and identifying the air quality. This protocol also
Fig. 1, which is a huge amount contributing 1.14 tons per helps the motes to sleep during the idle condition.
capita. These emissions are based on latest available Social In the city of London [13] the government uses Mobile
Accounting Matrix (SAM) [9].Different kinds of road pat- Discovery Net (MoDisNet) to monitor and get the real-time
terns majorly influence CO2 emissions because of irregular data from the various mobile and fixed sensor stations to
and sloppy roads. The effect of road grade has been evaluated analyze the AQI in the city. Since it has a mobile sensor
on fuel consumption which compares the fuel economy. Due unit it utilizes GUSTO sensor technology to identify the
to this the emission levels is whooping approximately to surrounded pollutants on the roads, these data will be sent to
10% in case of elevated hilly roads and 2% on flat roads. the station where data mining will happen for analysis and it
From this condition it can be seen that, fuel consumption will result in the formation of pollution data map indicating

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with various ranges of pollutants in certain colour patterns.
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
From prior discussions, it is clearly known that transporta-
tion is one of the major factors for climate change and many
adverse effects in all the living creatures. Most of the existing
system employs WSN to get the data from the motes which
consist of high range noise, delay and duplicated signal.
Hence the processing and getting the real-time data makes
this as a time-consuming process [14].These methods are
applicable to gather only the average air quality rather than
identifying the individual polluting vehicles. While going for
the deployment and cost wise, the existing methods involves
more protocol hierarchy algorithms to filter out the noise and
duplicated signals resulting in more complex nature [13].
For avoiding the same this paper has aimed to reduce the Fig. 3. Block diagram of the proposed system
complex nature of getting the data and low-cost monitoring
setup was suggested.
overall working prototype is shown in Fig. 2. Furthermore,
the block diagram of the proposed system is shown in Fig.
3.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The data collected from the gas sensor is processed and
the irregular emission is detected which is then registered to
RTO and CPCB for further actions.The system working flow
diagram is shown in Fig. 4. The Engine Control Unit (ECU)
is connected to the PIC controller which detects the excess
emission and reacts by turning off the vehicle. This will be
done by cutting down the electrical connection going to the
spark plug, for the same the warning to the user is shown in
Fig. 5 the driver is provided with maximum of 200 seconds
for parking the vehicle in a safer lane which can also be
noticed in Fig. 5 and the part of pseudo-code for this specific
condition is given below.
Fig. 2. Working prototype of the system if(VAL5==1){
VAL5=0;
The proposed methodology focuses in identifying and gsm command
monitoring the individual vehicle emission level as well (TN 35 AZ2351 CO LEVEL
as alerting the CPCB and RTO if the vehicle exceeds the "ABNORMAL" );}
standard limit (See Table I). This method consists of a delay(200);
gas sensor capable of detecting the combination of both for (j=16;j<28;j++)
CO and COx, which was placed on the exhaust of the {
vehicle. The sensor is also protected from heat dissipation send=(gpsdata[j]);
by placing it in the GALV Thermal Isolation Clip from the TXREG=(ser);
vehicle exhaust which causes the sensor to malfunction. The delay(200);
system is equipped with the GPS to send the location to the }
officials to detect the polluted vehicle. The prototype consist
lcd data(m+0x30);
of dual 6V batteries which supplies power to the whole setup
lcd data(k+0x30);
including GSM, LCD Display, Global Positioning System
lcd init();
(GPS) module and indicator, except the gas sensor since
gsm init();
it uses a single 9V battery separately due to its excess
power consumption. The collected data is stored in PIC Meanwhile, the system interfaced with the vehicle at
micro controller in a real-time basis and is evaluated using normal condition is shown in Fig. 6 which continuously
embedded C coding. Any abnormality in the comparison is senses the gas from the exhaust. The time period remains
communicated to the driver through LCD display and to at zero value while the vehicle is running in usual condition.
the nearest control station via GSM and GPS modules. The The abnormal condition detected in the vehicle is sent to

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 Fig. 6. Gas sensing at normal condition

Fig. 4. Flow diagram of the proposed system

Fig. 7. Message received at the RTO office and location of the vehicle

Fig. 5. Vehicle warning status due to exceeding the limit

the RTO and CPCB office and they issue the summon and
tow the vehicle to the nearby station using GPS location
shown in Fig. 7. The message which is sent contains the
abnormal emission level with GPS location coordinates. The
FC expiry of the vehicle is one of the most important reason
to prevent exhaustive emissions. Hence the proposed system
has special commands for sending alert message to RTO if
the FC expires which can be seen in Fig. 8 and the pseudo- Fig. 8. Message received at the RTO office due to the expiry of FC
code for this specific condition is given below.

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emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere. The govern-
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vehicle properly.
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