Over the last few decades, the development of the electronic nose (E-nose) for detection and quantification of dangerous and odorless gases, such as methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO), using an array of SnO2 gas sensors has attracted considerable attention. This paper addresses sensor cross sensitivity by developing a classifier and estimator using an artificial neural network (ANN) and least squares regression (LSR), respectively. Initially, the ANN was implemented using a feedforward pattern recognition algorithm to learn the collective behavior of an array as the signature of a particular gas. In the second phase, the classified gas was quantified by minimizing the mean square error using LSR. The combined approach produced 98.7% recognition probability, with 95.5 and 94.4% estimated gas concentration accuracies for CH4 and CO, respectively. The classifier and estimator parameters were deployed in a remote microcontroller for the actualization of a wireless E-nose system.
Combustible gases, such as CH4 and CO, directly or indirectly affect the human body. Thus, leakage detection of combustible gases is essential for various industrial sites and daily life. Many types of gas sensors are used to identify these combustible gases, but since gas sensors generally have low selectivity among gases, coupling issues often arise which adversely affect gas detection accuracy. To solve this problem, we built a decoupling algorithm with different gas sensors using a machine learning algorithm. Commercially available semiconductor sensors were employed to detect CH4 and CO, and then support vector machine (SVM) applied as a supervised learning algorithm for gas classification. We also introduced a pairing plot scheme to more effectively classify gas type. The proposed model classified CH4 and CO gases 100% correctly at all levels above the minimum concentration the gas sensors could detect. Consequently, SVM with pairing plot is a memory efficient and promising method for more accurate gas classification.