Adaptively Optimized Gas Analysis Model with Deep Learning for Near-Infrared Methane Sensors

Noise significantly limits the accuracy and stability of retrieving gas concentration with the traditional direct absorption spectroscopy (DAS). Here, we developed an adaptively optimized gas analysis model (AOGAM) composed of a neural sequence filter (NSF) and a neural concentration retriever (NCR) based on deep learning algorithms for extraction of methane absorption information from the noisy transmission spectra and obtaining the corresponding concentrations from the denoised spectra. The model was trained on two data sets, including a computationally generated one and the experimental one. We have applied this model for retrieving methane concentration from its transmission spectra in the near-infrared (NIR) region. The NSF was implemented through an encoder–decoder structure enhanced by the attention mechanism, improving robustness under noisy conditions. Further, the NCR was employed based on a combination of a principal component analysis (PCA) layer, which focuses the algorithm on the most significant spectral components, and a fully connected layer for solving the nonlinear inversion problem of the determination of methane concentration from the denoised spectra without manual computation. Evaluation results show that the proposed NSF outperforms widely used digital filters as well as the state-of-the-art filtering algorithms, improving the signal-to-noise ratio by 7.3 dB, and the concentrations determined with the NCR are more accurate than those determined with the traditional DAS method. With the AOGAM enhancement, the optimized methane sensor features precision and stability in real-time measurements and achieves the minimum detectable column density of 1.40 ppm·m (1σ). The promising results of the present study demonstrate that the combination of deep learning and absorption spectroscopy provides a more effective, accurate, and stable solution for a gas monitoring system.