There is an increasing awareness of the impact of air quality on human health. In the short term, poor air quality can exacerbate asthma, and lead to respiratory ailments. Longer term exposure to poor quality air can increase the risks of strokes, lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other a range of respiratory conditions. There is some evidence it may also affect the brain, increasing risk of dementia and cognitive decline in older people, and have impacts in pregnancy and child development.
Despite these concerns, actual data on air quality is quite limited, and lacks sufficient granularity to provide much by way of useful information to individuals. Air quality improvement measures are typically macro-initiatives (such as traffic calming measures), but these are things that an individual has little influence over.
The sensors that provide the publicly available data are part of fixed networks that are expensive to install and thus quite widely spaced. Even in a large city, sensors may cover an area of ~1km sq, and in more rural areas, much larger zones.
The Aira solution aims to change that by providing personal data via a wearable device, which can track air quality as experienced by an individual throughout their day. This allows someone to alter their behaviour (e.g. route to work, time of travel, exercise plan) to minimise their exposure. It also provides a facility to upload geotagged data to the cloud, so collectively, users can provide a huge improvement in the granularity of data geographically, and variation throughout the day.
The Aira sensor measures PM2.5 (particulate matter < 2.5 µm), which is the principal cause of health issues, alongside temperature and humidity. The sensor is encapsulated in a small portable device, which communicates via Bluetooth Low Energy to a smartphone application, which geotags the data and (at the user’s discretion) uploads the data to the cloud.
The core of the wearable device electronics is the Insight SIP ISP2454-LX Bluetooth 6.0 module. This contains a microprocessor to read the sensor data and manages the connection to the phone. With its state-of-the-art low power capabilities, this allows a long lifetime for the wearable device between recharges – several days autonomous use. This module is based on the Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF54L15 device.
Kevin Tang, co-founder of Aira Labs said “We chose the Insight SIP module as it offered all the features necessary to form the core of our device. Its miniature design allowed us to create a small and easy to wear device that won’t be an encumbrance to users. It also offers plenty of spare capability to support future iterations of the design”
Nick Wood, Sales and Marketing Director at Insight SIP said “We are delighted to have our module chosen for this important application. Air quality matters, and accurate data has to be the basis of any measures to improve it at both a personal and macro level”.
