Abstract: Environmental pollution caused by nitrogen oxides has always been a very serious problem, we need to use gas sensors to detect nitrogen oxides in order to prevent and solve pollution problems.Metal oxide semiconductor gas sensor has been widely concerned by researchers.A large number of experimental data show that the preparation of semiconductor materials with mesoporous structure will improve the performance of the sensor in the aspects of operating temperature, gas detection limit, stability and selectivity.In this paper, the response mechanism, performance parameters and influencing factors of metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors are briefly introduced and the research status of tungsten, zinc and tin based NO_x gas sensors with mesoporous structure is specifically reviewed.