Signal processing of transient atomic absorption signals

摘要

This article is an electronic publication in Spectrochimuo Acta Electronica (SAE), the electronic section of Specnochimica Acta Part B (SAB) The hard copy text is accompanied by a disk with a demonstration version of the simulation program, librariesof electronic and optical component blocks, simulation modeis, manual, and other files. Absorbance signals tor electrothermal atomization atomic absorption spectroscopy (ETA-AAS) were generated digitally and the effect of vaiious types and sources ol noise upon the precision of the absorbance measurement was evaluated by numerical calculation Peak area measurement, peak height measurement, and matched filtering were used lor processing these signals. The performance of these three techniques in the presence of various types of noises and the sensitivity of each to small variation in the atomizatkm conditions was calculated It is demonstrated that significant improvement in signal-tortoise ratios can be realized by application of appropriate signal processing methods. The results also indicate that one of the principal causes for loss of precision could be the variation in the heating characteristics of the furnnace.