A generalized method for environmental surveillance by remote probing

Abstract

New components and methods in the field of microwave techniques, electrooptics, computer technology, statistics, and electromagnetics open new and very interesting possibilities with regard to detection and identification problems. The current contribution suggests with varying degrees of substantiation a set of unified detection methods which may conceivably have an impact on several application areas (environmental surveillance, detection/identification of specific objects). The basic principle is the following. Most of the existing detection/identification systems do not make optimum use of all the a priori information that one generally is in possession of with regard to the target of interest. Knowing the geometrical shape of the target of interest and its molecular surface structure (e.g., structure of paint), an illumination function can be structured (matched filter concept) which gives optimum system sensitivity (minimum receiver bandwidth) with respect to the target of interest at the expense of the sensitivity for background objects (interferents). Theoretical results are given in the paper for a limited number of geometrical objects and for two different molecular surface compositions. It is shown that the system sensitivity and identification capability can be improved considerably using the suggested matched filter illumination technique.