Footstep detection and tracking

Persons or vehicles moving over ground generate a succession of impacts; these soil disturbances propagate away from the source as seismic waves. These seismic waves are especially useful in detecting footsteps which cannot be detected acoustically. Footstep signals can be distinguished from other seismic sources, such as vehicles or wind noise, by their impulsive nature. Even in noisy environments, statistical measures of the seismic amplitude distribution, such as kurtosis, can be used to identify a footstep. These detection methods can be used even with single component geophones. Moreover, the seismic signal is a vector wave that can be used to track the source bearing. To do such tracking a three-component measurement is needed. If multiple sources are separated in angle, we can use this bearing information to estimate the number of walkers.