Sensor Fusion for Public Space Utilization Monitoring in a Smart City

• Published in: IEEE internet of things journal Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 473 - 481
• Main Authors: Lau, Billy Pik Lik, Wijerathne, Nipun, Ng, Benny Kai Kiat, Chau Yuen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.04.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Acoustics; Data processing; Energy consumption; Environmental impact; False alarms; Internet of Things; Internet of Things (IoT); Logic gates; public space utilization; Public spaces; Relays; Remote sensors; sensor fusion; Sensors; Smart cities; smart city; space occupancy; spatial-temporal; Temperature sensors; Urban areas; Utilization; Wireless sensor networks
• ISSN: 2327-4662; 2327-4662
• DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2017.2748987

Public space utilization is crucial for urban developers to understand how efficient a place is being occupied in order to improve existing or future infrastructures. In a smart cities approach, implementing public space monitoring with Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors appear to be a viable solution. However, choice of sensors often is a challenging problem and often linked with scalability, coverage, energy consumption, accuracy, and privacy. To get the most from low cost sensor with aforementioned design in mind, we proposed data processing modules for capturing public space utilization with renewable wireless sensor network (RWSN) platform using pyroelectric infrared (PIR) and analog sound sensor. We first proposed a calibration process to remove false alarm of PIR sensor due to the impact of weather and environment. We then demonstrate how the sounds sensor can be processed to provide various insight of a public space. Lastly, we fused both sensors and study a particular public space utilization based on one month data to unveil its usage.