Exploiting temperature dependency in the detection of NQR signals [land mine detection applications]

Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) offers an unequivocal method of detecting and identifying land mines. Unfortunately, the practical use of NQR is restricted by the low signal to noise ratio (SNR), and means to improve the SNR are vital to enable a rapid, reliable and convenient system. In this paper, we develop a non-linear least squares detector exploiting the temperature dependency of the NQR frequencies as a way to enhance the SNR. Numerical simulations on both synthetic and real measured data indicate an excellent performance of the method.