Design of chemical sensor arrays for monitoring disposal sites on the ocean floor

We develop methods for automatic environmental monitoring of disposal sites on the deep ocean floor using chemical sensor arrays and statistical hypothesis testing. Such sites have been proposed to relocate dredge materials from harbors and shipping channels. The transport of pollutants is modeled as a diffusion process, and the measurement and statistical models are derived by exploiting the spatial and temporal evolution of the associated concentration distribution. We derive two detectors, the generalized likelihood ratio (GLR) test and the mean detector, and determine their performance in terms of the probabilities of false alarm and detection. The results are applied to the design of chemical sensor arrays satisfying criteria specified in terms of these probabilities, and to optimally select a number of sensors and time samples. Numerical examples are used to demonstrate the applicability of our results.