The position of a magnetic target can be obtained through magnetic anomaly which is measured by a magnetic sensor. Comparing with vector magnetic sensor, the measurement value of the scalar magnetic sensor is almost not influenced by its orientation in measurement coordinate axes. Therefore, scalar magnetic sensors can be easily assembled into an array. Based on analysis of the total scalar magnetic anomaly measured by scalar magnetometer, we present an efficient method for tracking a magnetic target using scalar magnetometer array. In this method, we separate the position information and magnetic moment information of magnetic target by matrix transformation. Then, we can obtain the position of the magnetic target in real time by a scalar magnetometer array and a particle swarm optimization algorithm. In addition, the magnetic moment of the target can be estimated when the target’s position had been calculated. The simulation shows that the position of the target can be calculated accurately and the relative error of the position is <5 %. The calculated magnetic moment of the target is close to the theoretical value. In addition, execution time of each calculation is <1 s. Thus, the position of the magnetic target can be obtained in real-time through this method.
Purpose
This paper aims to focus on the tracking of a moving magnetic target by using total field magnetometers and to present a tracking method based on the gradient of a magnetic anomaly. In the tracking, it is assumed that the motion of the target is equivalent to a first-order Markov process. And the unit direction vector of the magnetic moment from the gradient of the magnetic anomaly can be obtained. According to the unit direction vector, the inverse problem is turned into an optimization problem to estimate the parameters of the target. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to solve this optimization problem. The proposed method is validated by the numerical simulation and real data. The parameters of the target can be calculated rapidly using the proposed method. And the results show that the estimated parameters of the mobile target using the proposed method are very close to the true values.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors focus on the tracking of a moving magnetic target by using total field magnetometers and present a tracking method based on the gradient of a magnetic anomaly.
Findings
The paper provides an effective method for tracking the magnetic target based on an array with total field sensors.
Originality/value
Comparing with a vector magnetic sensor, the measurement of the scalar magnetic sensor is almost not influenced by its orientation. In this paper, a moving magnetic target was tracked by using total field magnetometers and a tracking method presented based on the gradient of a magnetic anomaly.
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