A digital photonic nose concept based on infrared absorption inside a hollow core infrared transmitting fiber array is presented. Wavelength-scalable photonic band gap fibers filter specific energy photons from a blackbody source, where volatile compounds selectively absorb photons depending on their chemical absorption spectrum. The pattern resulting in the detector array is processed as a binary signature. Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.