A novel adaptive noise canceling system for urea NQR spectrum analysis

Abstract

Due to its practical ease of use and sufficiently high reliability, Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) has largely been used in remote sensing-based detection of quadrupole nuclei, especially Nitrogen-containing materials. Since the received signal of free induction decay (FID) is inherently weak in this technique, the noise and the interference of the environment would dramatically impair the performance of the detecting systems. To handle such challenges, an adaptive noise canceling method was employed to improve the signal to noise and interference ratio (SNIR) in FID signals. FID signals, noise, and interference were received by the main antenna, while similar noise and interference would be received by the auxiliary antenna. The proposed system significantly reduced noise and interference through the digital noise and interference cancellation algorithm, pulse integration, averaging, and singular spectrum analysis (SSA). Urea powder was empirically analyzed outdoors, suggesting that the proposed adaptive noise and interference cancellation (ANIC) system, effectively suppressed noise and interference by 41.13 dB and amplified the FID signal by 53.36 dB. The strongest signal was detected at 2870.4 kHz.