Air pollution kills millions of people each year. According to recent estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO), for city dwellers around the globe, four-fifths live with air quality that exceeds WHO recommended pollution levels. This problem also includes the issue of air quality monitoring, which is typically made by means of special automatic stations equipped with sophisticated devices. The scientists nevertheless suggest that in the future, 5G networks antennas could act as sensors, giving people clearer view of what air they are breathing.

In Brno, air quality is measured by ten automatic stations: four of these belong to the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, one to the Health Institute of Ostrava and the rest is the property of the city of Brno. This way, residents of the South Moravian capital have information about pollution from dozens of places, thanks to which they can get an idea of the current situation.

"According to foreign studies, it is desirable to achieve coverage of a thousand sensors per square mile, that is, about one and a half square kilometers. Sensors that could be used do exist, nevertheless their price ranges from hundreds to thousands of euros per piece, which means that such a blanket monitoring would be completely unrealistic in terms of costs," explains Pavel Škrabánek from the Institute of Automation and Computer Science at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Brno.

For three years already, Škrabánek has been cooperating with an international scientific team that has set itself the goal of finding a way to ensure more accurate monitoring and, ideally, to do it cheap. Specifically, they want to take advantage of the recent spread of 5G networks. "One 5G antenna is to cover a perimeter of about 500 to 1,000 meters, so it can be expected that cities will be covered by them quite densely. We are trying to modify the antennas so that they themselves become sensors for measuring pollutants. In case we succeed, we will have air quality data available literally around every corner," Škrabánek describes the idea.

The international AQMA team is led by Professor Michael Cheffena of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Gjøvik, Norway. In addition to this institution, BI Norwegian Business School, University Carloss III de Madrid and Brno University of Technology also participate. While colleagues in Norway are preparing special polymers capable of attracting specific harmful substances, Pavel Škrabánek is working on an algorithm that captures small changes in the behavior of an antenna exposed to air pollution and converts them into the value of a specific air quality data.

Initial tests have already proven that this idea works, now the scientists are trying to work with multiple antennas at once and are already preparing follow-up research that will help move the developed antennas towards further testing. This should result in know-how that could be marketed or commercialized and sold to a private company. However, as Škrabánek himself points out, researchers still have a long way to go before they get there.