Study of different filtering techniques applied to spectra from airborne gamma spectrometry

One of the features of spectra obtained by airborne gamma spectrometry is low counting statistics due to the short acquisition time (1 s) and the large source-detector distance (40 m). It leads to considerable uncertainty in radionuclide identification and determination of their respective activities from the windows method recommended by the IAEA, especially for low-level radioactivity. The present work compares the results obtained with different filtering techniques in terms of errors on the filtered spectra when applying the window method over the whole gamma energy range. The results are used to determine which filtering technique is the most suitable in combination with some method for a total stripping of the spectrum.