PYRL: A Radiation Source Localization Method in Urban Environments

In complex urban environments, traditional radiation source localization methods are difficult to achieve fast and accurate localization and cannot spatially visualize their geographic locations. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a radiation source localization method for urban environments called PYRL. The method maps electric field strength values received from sensors into field strength distribution maps and uses binarization and morphological expansion operations to delineate clusters of areas where radiation sources may exist. Subsequently, in combination with the You Only Look Once (YOLO) network, accurate localization of radiation sources at any transmit power is achieved. Experimental results show that the average localization error of this method in complex environments is approximately 4.8 meters, the time to locate a radiation source is about 0.012 seconds, and the determined location of the radiation source is highly consistent with the actual situation, which demonstrates a good application prospect.