Electronic nose based on SAWS array and its odor identification capability

The ability of odor identification by an electronic nose based on eight surface acoustic wave sensors (SAWS) was demonstrated in the present paper. The SAWS-based electronic nose was established first and its frequency stability was checked. Then, by applying appropriate polymers coating on SAW devices (SAWD), the prototype instrument was employed to collect data from its exposure to four kinds of organic reagents (ethanol, ether, acetone, ethyltate), four kinds of liquors (beer, spirit, samshu, wine) and five kinds of perfumes (phenethyl alcohol, ionone, vanillylalkohol, ethylisobutyrate, thymol). Data analysis was performed by three pattern recognition methods (principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares (PLS), artificial neural network (ANN)). The results showed that the electronic nose was able to identify the above odors quite well.