Temperature compensation of ball surface acoustic wave sensor by two-frequency measurement using undersampling

To realize a practical two-frequency measurement (TFM) system for precise temperature compensation in a ball surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor, the application of undersampling (US) was investigated. The subtraction coefficient for the temperature compensation in US was theoretically explained. The principle of the TFM system using US was simulated by the decimation of the oversampling (OS) waveform after applying a narrow band-pass filter, and the delay time was measured using a wavelet transform. In the application of the method to trace moisture measurement, the delay time response due to US matched that due to OS with a correlation coefficient higher than 0.9999. Although rms noise was increased by US, the response to the concentration change of 4–17 nmol/mol was measured with a signal-to-noise ratio higher than 20. From these results, it was shown that the precise output of the ball SAW sensor could be obtained even when using US, which was equivalent to that using OS.