Automatic signal detection applied to fire control by infrared digital signal processing

This paper presents a general scheme for automatic signal detection in scanning surveillance systems. It considers the problem of deciding whether an alert situation exists, based on the data measured in the cell under analysis in different consecutive scanning time instants. The proposed scheme includes a linear predictor and a subspace model for the signal to be detected, in an attempt to maximise the performance of the detector. Although this system may be applicable to general scanning surveillance problems, we focus the work on the problem of wide-area uncontrolled fire detection by means of infrared radar. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.