Chemical Source Localization in Unknown Turbulence Using the Cross-Correlation Method

Estimating the direction of a diffusive source is a difficult problem, and little has been tried to estimate a chemical source subject to turbulence. Turbulence must be addressed if chemical localizer systems are to be effective. We look at how to quantify turbulence and develop a measure to locate a source in two different types of turbulence, modulated and unmodulated plumes. We show that a plume can be modeled linearly on a small-scale and that a wind measure for a stationary sensor array can indicate the direction of a chemical source with reasonable accuracy and time. This measure can be easily implemented in low-power computational electronics and applied to the detection of chemical leaks and illegal substances