New diagnostic requirements are driving the need for improvements in CO₂ waveform morphology. This means the waveform must be captured in near real time, and at high precision. In order to achieve this, a number of several obstacles need to be overcome. For the sensor to perform correctly, the gas that has been measured has to be removed from the system before the new gas can be sampled. In many applications, the gas is pumped into the sensing system and it is helpful to minimise the overall gas volume in the sensor and connecting pipes. GSS sensors are designed to have a small gas measurement chamber, which only requires approximately 2.8ml of gas for a single measurement. 

The sensor sampling rate is an essential component in ensuring the waveform is captured with high fidelity. In addition to the basic amplitude of the waveform, the spatial frequency content is critical in providing more accurate waveform morphology. GSS has two sensors that are specifically designed for high-speed sampling of CO₂ gas. The SprintIR®-6S samples at 20Hz and the SprintIR®-R at 50Hz. This means that in the case of the SprintIR®-R, and assuming the gas flow rate can support it, the sensor can resolve spatial frequency components of up to 25Hz at 12-bit resolution. This makes it ideal to support a new generation of CO₂ monitoring applications.