Origins of Baseline Drift and Distortion in Fourier Transform Spectra

The spectrum scanned by a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTIR) often has a baseline drift. However, baseline distortion rarely occurs in a laboratory owing to the insignificant effects of environmental vibrations and electromagnetic factors. Even if it occurs, the distorted spectrum can be manually eliminated. However, in a complex environment, especially after the long-term operation of a spectrometer, the scanned spectrum may be distorted to different degrees. Herein, the origins of spectral baseline drifts and distortions are analyzed and simulated using MATLAB; furthermore, a baseline correction method based on the baseline-type model is proposed. The results of experiments performed on the methane spectrum confirm that the proposed method outperformed the improved modified multi-polynomial fitting and iterative averaging methods.