Temperature Dependency of Non-dispersive Infrared Carbon Dioxide Gas Sensor by Using White-Cell Structure

NDIR $CO_2$ gas sensor was prototyped with ASIC implemented thermopile sensor which included temperature sensor and White-Cell structure in this paper. The temperature dependency of dual infrared sensors ( $CO_2$ and reference IR sensors) has been characterized and their output voltage ratios according to the temperature and gas concentration were presented in this paper for achieving temperature compensation algorithm. The initial output voltages of NDIR $CO_2$ gas and reference IR sensors showed $3^{rd}$ order polynomial and linear output voltages according to the variation of ambient temperatures from 253 K to 333 K, respectively. The output voltages of temperature sensor presented a linear dependency according to the ambient temperature and could be described with V(T) = -3.0069+0.0145T(V). The characteristics of output voltage ratios could be modeled with five parameters which are dependent upon the ambient temperatures and gas concentration. The estimated $CO_2$ concentrations showed relatively high error below 300 ppm (maximum 572 % at 7 ppm $CO_2$ concentration), however, as the concentration increased from 500 ppm to 2,000 ppm, the overall estimated errors of $CO_2$ concentrations were less than ${\pm}10%$ in this research.