Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment

Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment (한국대기환경학회)
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Application of Digital Signal Analysis Technique to Enhance the Quality of Tracer Gas Measurements in IAQ Model Tests

  • Lee, Hee-Kwan (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Incheon) ;
  • Awbi, Hazim B. (School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading)
  • Published : 2007.12.31
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Abstract

The introduction of tracer gas techniques to ventilation studies in indoor environments provides valuable information that used to be unattainable from conventional testing environments. Data acquisition systems (DASs) containing analogue-to-digital (A/D) converters are usually used to function the key role that records signals to storage in digital format. In the testing process, there exist a number of components in the measuring equipment which may produce system-based inference to the monitored results. These unwanted fluctuations may cause significant error in data analysis, especially when non-linear algorithms are involved. In this study, a pre-processor is developed and applied to separate the unwanted fluctuations (noise or interference) in raw measurements and to reduce the uncertainty in the measurement. Moving average, notch filter, FIR (Finite Impulse Response) filters, and IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filters are designed and applied to collect the desired information from the raw measurements. Tracer gas concentrations are monitored during leakage and ventilation tests in the model test room. The signal analysis functions are introduced to carry out the digital signal processing (DSP) work. Overall the FIR filters process the $CO_2$ measurement properly for ventilation rate and mean age of air calculations. It is found that, the Kaiser filter was the most applicable digital filter for pre-processing the tracer gas measurements. Although the IIR filters help to reduce the random noise in the data, they cause considerable changes to the filtered data, which is not desirable.

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