True sparse PCA for reducing the number of essential sensors in virtual metrology
提出一种真实稀疏主成分分析方法，通过仅用少量输入变量构建主成分，减少虚拟量测中所需的关键传感器数量，同时保持解释方差近似不变。
In the semiconductor industry, virtual metrology (VM) is a cost-effective and efficient technique for monitoring the processes from one wafer to another. This technique is implemented by generating a predictive model that uses real-time data from equipment sensors in conjunction with measured wafer quality characteristics. Before establishing a prediction model for the VM system, appropriate selection of relevant input variables should be performed to maintain the efficiency of subsequent analyses considering the large dimensionality of the sensor data inputs. However, wafer production processes usually employ multiple sensors, which leads to cost escalations. Herein, we propose a variant of the sparse principal component analysis (PCA) called true sparse PCA (TSPCA). The proposed method uses a small number of input variables in the first few principal components. The main contribution of the proposed TSPCA is reducing the number of essential sensors. Our experimental results demonstrate that compared to the existing sparse PCA methods, the proposed approach can reduce the number of sensors required while explaining an approximately equivalent amount of variance.