Comparative Study of Drift Compensation Methods for Environmental Gas Sensors

Abstract

Most drift compensation attempts in environmental gas sensors are only emphasize on the "already-known" drift-causing parameter (i.e., ambient temperature, relative humidity) in compensating the sensor drift. Less consideration is taken to another parameter (i.e., baseline responses) that might have affected indirectly with the promotion of drift-causing parameter variable (in this context, is ambient temperature variable). In this study, the "indirect" drift-causing parameter (drifted baseline responses) has been taken into consideration in compensating the sensor drift caused by ambient temperature variable, by means of a proposed drift compensation method (named as RT-method). The effectiveness of this method in its efficacy of compensating drift was analysed and compared with the common method that used the "already-known" drift-causing parameter (named as T-method), using drift reduction percentage. From the results analysis, the RT-method has outperformed T- method in the drift reduction percentage, with its ability to reduce drift up to 64% rather than the T-method which only able to reduce up to 45% for TGS2600 sensor. It has proven that the inclusion of drifted baseline responses into drift compensation attempt would resulted to an improved drift compensation efficiency.