Robustness Investigation of a Particle Analyzer for the Analysis of Volcanic Ash

The real-time monitoring of volcanic ash is a challenging task, which has been seriously considered in recent years by many institutions handling real needs of urban and air traffic authorities. In this paper a vision-based methodology is presented, which aims to provide a real-time analysis and estimation of specific features characterizing volcanic ash. The measurement methodology is discussed, together with the development of a sensing node prototype. An experimental survey has been performed in order to characterize the system performances and to asses its robustness. A resolution of $23.6\ \mu\mathrm{m}$ has been estimated which matches specifications driven by the addressed application.