Moving Sources Detection Algorithm for Radiation Portal Monitors Used in a Linear Network

Romain Coulon (1) , Vladimir Kondrasovs (1) , Karim Boudergui (1) , Stéphane Normand (1)

1 LCAE - Laboratoire Capteurs et Architectures Electroniques

To monitor radioactivity passing through a vehicle such as a pedestrian, a car, a train or a truck, Radiation Portal Monitors (RMP) are commonly employed. These detection systems consist of a large volume detector set close to the potential source path. An alarm is then triggered when the signal rises over a threshold initially estimated in view of the natural background signal. The approach developed in this work makes use of several detectors in a network along the source path. The correlation detection approach is elaborated to take into account the temporal periodicity of the signals taken by all distributed sensors as a whole. This new detection method is then not based only on counting statistics but also on the temporal series analysis. Therefore, a specific algorithm has been developed in our laboratory for this security application and shows a significant improvement, especially in terms of detection probability increase and false alarm reduction. This paper presents the theoretical approach and promising results obtained by simulation.

Keywords: Algorithm; detection; filter; instrument; measurement; monitor; moving; nuclear; radiation; radioactive; safeguard; security; signal processing; source; time series analysis; Index Terms-Algorithm; measure-ment

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]; Signal and Image processing; Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Physics [physics]; Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]

Romain Coulon, Vladimir Kondrasovs, Karim Boudergui, Stéphane Normand. Moving Sources Detection Algorithm for Radiation Portal Monitors Used in a Linear Network. IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 2014, 61 (4), pp.2189 - 2194. ⟨10.1109/TNS.2014.2299872⟩. ⟨cea-01830910⟩