Characterizing liquids based on features extracted from time-dependent, differential signal measurements

A system comprising:

• a liquid storage including liquid containers adapted for storing respective liquids including a reference liquid and a set of liquids to be characterized;
• a sensing system having a plurality of sensors arranged in one or more sensor pairs, wherein each of the one or more sensor pairs are configured to produce a differential signal, in operation and the sensing system and the liquid storage system are jointly configured to allow the sensing system to perform a plurality of sensing cycles, whereby, during each sensing cycle in the plurality of sensing cycles, each of the one or more sensor pairs successively senses the reference liquid and a liquid in the set of liquids to be characterized, so as to obtain one or more time-dependent signals as differential signals for each liquid in the set of liquids to be characterized, in operation, wherein the reference liquid is selected to be a center of a plurality of steady-state values associated with each liquid in the set of liquids;
• and
• a processing system, which is connected to the sensing system to access the one or more time-dependent signals obtained, in operation, and is further configured to:
• extract, for each liquid in the set of liquids, one or more sets of features from one or more portions of the one or more time-dependent signals accessed, respectively, each of the one or more portions including a signal portion obtained while sensing each liquid in the set of liquids with said respective pair, in operation, wherein the one or more sets of features include an average of signal portions with respect to the reference liquid;
• and
• characterize each liquid in the set of liquids based on the one or more extracted sets of the one or more features.

A computer program product comprising:

• one or more computer readable storage media and program instructions stored on the one or more computer readable storage media, the stored program instructions comprising:
• program instructions to provide a set of liquids including a reference liquid and m liquids to be characterized, where m≥2, and a sensing system with N sensors arranged in n sensor pairs, where N≥2 and n≥1;
• and
• for each liquid of the m liquids:
• program instructions to obtain n time-dependent signals with the n sensor pairs, respectively, wherein each of the n time-dependent signals is obtained as a differential signal of a respective pair of the n sensor pairs by successively sensing the reference liquid and said each liquid with said respective pair, wherein the reference liquid is selected to be a center of a plurality of steady-state values associated with each liquid in the set of liquids;
• program instructions to extract n sets of k features from n portions of the n time-dependent signals, respectively, where k≥1, each of the n portions including a signal portion obtained while sensing said each liquid with said respective pair, wherein the n sets of k features include an average of signal portions with respect to the reference liquid;
• and
• program instructions to characterize said each liquid based on the n sets of k features extracted therefor.