Improving drift correction by double projection preprocessing in gas sensor arrays

It is well known that gas chemical sensors are strongly affected by drift. Drift consist on changes in sensors responses along the time, which make that initial statistical models for gas or odor recognition become useless after a period of time of about weeks. Gas sensor arrays based instruments periodically need calibrations that are expensive and laborious. Many different statistical methods have been proposed to extend time between recalibrations. In this work, a simple preprocessing technique based on a double projection is proposed as a prior step to a posterior drift correction algorithm (in this particular case, Direct Orthogonal Signal Correction). This method highly improves the time stability of data in relation with the one obtained by using only such drift correction method. The performance of this technique will be evaluated on a dataset composed by measurements of three analytes by a polymer sensor array along ten months. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.