Title: The optimum embedded controller for hand-held electronic nose

Authors: Abu Hassan Abdullah; Abdul Hamid Adom; Ali Yeon Md Shakaff; Mohd Noor Ahmad; Ammar Zakaria; Fathinul Syahir Ahmad Saad

Addresses: CEASTech, UniMAP, Tmn Muhibbah, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia ' CEASTech, UniMAP, Tmn Muhibbah, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia ' CEASTech, UniMAP, Tmn Muhibbah, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia ' CEASTech, UniMAP, Tmn Muhibbah, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia ' CEASTech, UniMAP, Tmn Muhibbah, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia ' CEASTech, UniMAP, Tmn Muhibbah, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia

Abstract: Electronic nose (e-nose) is an instrument that mimics human olfactory system and used to detect, discriminate and classify odours. The instrument applications include food quality assurance, plant disease detection and environmental monitoring. Recent developments in embedded technology have made possible to develop a cost-effective instrument with simple operating procedures. This paper describes the selection of an optimum embedded controller for the development of a hand-held e-nose. The developed instrument uses off-the-shelf components, i.e., sensors, microcontroller and signal conditioning circuit. The data processing utilises multivariate statistical analysis, i.e., principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and linear discriminate analysis (LDA). The developed instrument was tested to discriminate the basic artificial food essences. Initial results show that the instrument is able to discriminate the samples based on their odour chemical fingerprint profile. The multivariate statistical analysis plots show that the samples are able to be grouped into different clusters.

Keywords: electronic nose; sensory systems; microcontrollers; multivariate statistical analysis; embedded controllers; hand-held devices; e-nose; odours; odour detection; olfactory systems; embedded systems; principal component analysis; PCA; hierarchical cluster analysis; HCA; linear discriminate analysis; LDA; artificial food essences; chemical fingerprint profile.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2013.055709

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2013 Vol.5 No.3, pp.269 - 278

Published online: 28 Jan 2014 *

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