Exploiting temperature dependency in the detection of NQR signals

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 the means to improve the SNR are vital to enable a rapid, reliable, and convenient system. In this paper, an approximate maximum-likelihood detector (AML) is developed, exploiting the temperature dependency of the NQR frequencies as a way to enhance the SNR. Numerical evaluation using both simulated and real NQR data indicate a significant gain in probability of accurate detection as compared with the current state-of-the-art approach.