Radiation Detection and Localization Testbed

We have built a scale-down version of the testbed, called work bench. One low-dose (0.25millicurie) and three RFTrax sensors are placed on a table. Each sensor is connected to a iServer, which maps the serial port to an ethernet IP address. So the SensorNet node are polling reading from these three sensors.

One problem is that the radiation source is quite weak, so that the sensor readings are quite low. Only few (<5) particles per second if placing the sensor at zero distance. This will definitely affect the accuracy of the detection and localization algorithms. Nagi is probably going to bring this work bench to some labs that have access to higher-level radiation source, and collect the readings.

We have not tested the detection and localization algorithms yet. We still do not know their performance. Several statisical variables are proposed to detect the radiation source. But they all need some kind of detection threshold, and we have not figured out what they should be.