Robust Multichannel Detection of Mixtures Using Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance

Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) is a radio-frequency (RF) spectroscopic technique, able to detect the presence of many high explosives and narcotics. In practice, the weak NQR signal is often corrupted by strong RF interference (RFI); therefore, various multichannel detection algorithms have recently been proposed for NQR. However, these algorithms allow for only a single compound/polymorph, whose associated amplitudes are assumed to be known to within a scaling. Regrettably, these amplitudes are typically prone to some level of uncertainty; and, in several cases of interest, signals from a mixture of NQR compounds/polymorphs may be present, leading to performance degradation in the aforementioned algorithms. In this paper, we develop a robust multisensor hybrid algorithm able to process NQR signals from mixtures while also allowing for errors in the assumed amplitudes. Numerical investigations indicate that the proposed algorithm provides significant performance gains as compared to existing algorithms in the case when there are multiple polymorphs present and/or when uncertainties in the amplitudes exist.