Spatially-Resolved Estimation of Personal Dosage of Airborne Particulates for Ambulatory Subjects using Wearable Sensors

Abstract

This paper describes a novel method for continuous estimation of personal dosage of airborne particulates for ambulatory subjects using a body sensor network comprising of a wearable particle counter for monitoring the concentration of airborne particulates (PM10/2.5), and a respiratory monitor worn as a patch on the chest for recording breathing rate and flow. Both the devices communicate wirelessly over BLE with an Android mobile phone which serves as a gateway to Google Cloud for storage, and sensor data analytics. A security policy is described for dealing with the personal and spatially-resolved nature of the sensor data which balances feasibility with levels of privacy and security. Sample results are presented for the personal dose profile for a healthy subject in an indoor microenvironment, and a spatio-temporal dose profile for a person walking outdoors in an urban environment.