Apparatuses and methods for anomalous gas concentration detection

A method comprising:

• obtaining, using a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system including a laser source modulated at a modulation frequency, a set of gas concentration measurements from a target area;
• discarding or modifying certain measurements of the set of gas concentration measurements based at least in part on a signal amplitude present in at least one odd harmonic of the modulation frequency to provide a revised set of measurements;
• and
• determining a presence of an anomalous gas concentration based on the revised set of measurements.

A method comprising:

• obtaining, using a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system, a set of gas concentration measurements from a target area;
• determining, based on a speckle noise model, at least one anomalous gas concentration measurement in the set of gas concentration measurements;
• and
• determining a presence of a gas plume associated with the at least one anomalous gas concentration measurement and one or more of the set of gas concentration measurements nearby a location of the at least one anomalous gas concentration measurement.

An apparatus comprising:

• an optical system comprising a laser source configured to modulate at a modulation frequency, the optical system configured to record a set of gas concentration measurements based on received light from a target area;
• at least one processor;
• and
• a memory, the memory encoded with executable instructions, which, when executed by the at least one processor cause the apparatus to:
• discard or modify certain measurements of the set of gas concentration measurements based on a comparison of measurements in the set of gas concentration measurements to an adaptive threshold with a value based on an expected noise level to provide a first revised set of measurements;
• identify certain of the measurements of the first revised set of measurements as outliers and discard or modify the outliers to provide a second revised set of measurements;
• determine a presence of a gas plume based on at least one measurement point in the second revised set of measurements and discard or modify measurements of the second revised set of measurements which are not associated with the gas plume.