Acetylene C 2 H 2 gas is one of the most important fault characteristic hydrocarbon gases dissolved in oil immersed power transformer oil. This paper reports the successful preparation and characterization of samarium oxide Sm 2 O 3 decorated tin oxide SnO 2 based sensors with hierarchical rod structure for C 2 H 2 gas detection. Pure and Sm 2 O 3 decorated SnO 2 sensing structures were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method and characterized by XRD, FESEM, TEM, EDS, and XPS measurements, respectively. Planar chemical gas sensors with the synthesis samples were fabricated, and their sensing performances to C 2 H 2 gas were systematically performed and automatically recorded by a CGS-1 TP intelligent gas sensing analysis system. The optimum operating temperature of the Sm 2 O 3 decorated SnO 2 based sensor towards 50 L/L of C 2 H 2 is 260 ∘ C, and its corresponding response value is 38.12, which is 6 times larger than the pure one. Its response time is about 8-10 s and 10-13 s for recovery time. Meanwhile good stability and reproducibility of the decorated sensor to C 2 H 2 gas are also obtained. Furthermore, the proposed sensor exhibits excellent C 2 H 2 selectivity among some potential interface gases, like H 2 and CO gas. All sensing results indicate the sensor fabricated with oxide Sm 2 O 3 decorated SnO 2 nanorods might be a promising candidate for C 2 H 2 detection in practice.