Systems and methods disclosed provide for methods of managing polarity switching in an ion mobility spectrometer, and provide for management of the repelling grid voltage, the gating grid voltage, and the fixed grid voltage during polarity switching. Systems and methods also provide for the management of the effect of dielectric relaxation in an insulator proximal to the collector, and provide for a preamplifier coupled to the collector including a switch, and a method of managing the collector output including the switch. Systems and methods consistent with the current disclosure further provide for a method of normalizing ion mobility data by determining fitting coefficients associated with a plurality of measurement data sets, and subtracting the curves determined by the fitting coefficients from the data acquired by the ion mobility spectrometer.