Detecting and Locating Radioactive Signals with Wireless Sensor Networks

—Methods of detecting and locating nuclear radioactive targets via wireless sensor networks (WSN) are proposed in this paper. In real applications, a nuclear radioactive target can be interpreted either as a hidden nuclear weapon held by nuclear terrorists or as a leak of nuclear radioactive materials at a unit of nuclear power stations. Assume a WSN is composed of radiation detectors deployed at different locations over the area of interest. Detection and location methods have been proposed based on physical law that radiation received by a sensor is composed of a background plus a signal, in which the signal rate decreases as the distance increases. Based on the simulation evaluations, the proposed methods have been shown ef cient and effective. This research will have wide applications in the nuclear safety and security problems. Index Terms—Con dence interval, likelihood ratio test, maximum likelihood estimates, signal plus background model, radiation and radioactive isotopes, wireless sensor network.