A practical gas sensing system utilizing absorption spectrum scanning techniques was developed. Using the narrow-band transmission of a fiber tunable filter (TOF) and wavelength modulation technique, the so-called cross-sensing effects of the traditional spectrum absorption based gas sensor were reduced effectively and thus the target gas was detected sensitively and selectively. In order to reduce the effects of nonlinearity of TOF on the measurement results and improve the system stability in operation, the reflection spectrum of a reference FBG was monitored and employed to control the modulation region and center of TOF wavelength precisely. Moreover, a kind of weak signal detecting circuits was developed to detect the weak response signal of the system with high sensitivity. The properties of the proposed system were demonstrated experimentally by detection of acetylene. Approximate linear relationships between the system responses and the input acetylene concentrations were demonstrated by experiments. The minimum detectable acetylene of 5 x 10(-6), with signal-noise ratio of 3, was also achieved by experiments.