Target Detection and Classification Using Seismic and PIR Sensors

Unattended ground sensors (UGS) are widely used in industrial monitoring and military operations. Such UGS systems are usually lightweight devices that automatically monitor the local activities in-situ, and transfer target detection and classification reports to the processing center at a higher level of hierarchy. Commercially available UGS systems make use of multiple sensing modalities (e.g., acoustic, seismic, passive infrared, magnetic, electrostatic, and video). Efficacy of UGS systems is often limited by high false alarm rates because the onboard data processing algorithms may not be able to correctly discriminate different types of targets (e.g., humans from animals). For example, discriminating human footstep signals from other targets and noise sources is a challenging task, because the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of footsteps decreases rapidly with the distance between the sensor and the pedestrian.