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Broadband Fluxgate Magnetometer
Broadband Fluxgate Magnetometer
By P Palangio
(1998)
Volume: 41, Issue: 3, Pages: 499-509
ISSN: 03652556
Find this paper at:
• openurl.ac.uk
• WorldCat®
• Google Scholar
Country/Region: China
Product Description
Fluxgate Magnetometers
Our laboratory has been involved in the design and build of radiation hardened Fluxgate
Magnetometers for over twenty years. During this time we have optimised the design to
produce one of the most stable and low noise models in-flight to date.
- A periodic bi-polar current pulse is injected into the drive winding to drive the
material around its B-H loop and deeply saturating the core in alternate directions (i.e.
magnetised - unmagnetised - inversely magnetised - unmagnetised - magnetised etc.).
- The sense winding placed around the sensor picks up an induced voltage caused by
changing flux within the coil as a result of an external field. This induced voltage
appears as a signal at twice the drive frequency.
The drive frequency 'f', is typically tens of kHz and thus the induced '2f' will be twice
that. Sense and detection electronics are required to extract magnitude and phase of
the very small field proportional signal, to determine the field magnitude and
direction. Signal amplification may be achieved either by use of a amplifier, tuning the
sense winding so its is more sensitive at 2f or a combination of both. In this
configuration we have what is known as an 'open loop' design. However usually the
signal will be integrated and fed into a feedback winding to null out the field in the
core for operation in 'closed loop ' which improves linearity. Gain-switching is also
employed to increase the dynamic range. Considerable effort is expended to remove the
presence of harmonics other than 2f which could result in an increase in the noise level
or cause unwanted offsets.
The Double Star EM Sensor: Square sense windings are visible wrapped around 2
cores fixed to a ceramic mounting
CURRENT STATUS
Implementation of the sense electronics has traditionally been in the analogue domain,
however recent advances in embedded devices has seen progress in development
of digital fluxgates. For three axis measurement three rings cores are usually used but it
is possible to only use two rings cores (with dual sense winding) as in the case of
the Double Star instrument. Imperial College fluxgates have been shown to have very
good offset drift and noise performance (<5pT/√Hz @ 1Hz). A typical noise spectra is
shown in the figure opposite.
Calibration
To provide magnetometer data suitable for scientific study, the calibration step is
essential. The full calibration process involves a calibration campaign carried out on
the ground before launch followed by constant in-flight calibration after the launch.
The figures below show spectrograms for a complete orbit before and after adjustment
of the calibration parameters. In both cases, the instrument range is indicated by the
solid red or white line. For each orbit, the range transitions from 4->3->2->3->4, with
most of the time spent in Range 2.
Further details of the solutions to the main calibration issues which lead to final data
products of the highest quality can be found in the links below.
Equation 1
Calibration parameters:
• Elevation angles, θ
• Azimuthal angles, φ
• Gains, G
• Offsets, O
Coordinates:
• Sensor, S
• Orthogonal, x,y,z
After launch, the calibration problem can be represented by equation 1. This equation
shows the transformation between a magnetic field vector in the sensor coordinate
system and a magnetic field measured in nT in an orthogonal coordinate system. The
task of producing calibrated data then comes down to determining the parameters in this
calibration equation. There are six angles, three gains and three offsets. There is no
single calibration analysis that can be used to calculate all of these parameters. A
description of a set of calibration techniques that can be used is in the in-flight
calibration section.
Figure 1: The relation between the orthogonal and sensor coordinate systems. The
angles θ and φ for each sensor coordinate is defined in the same way. θ is measured
from the z-axis and φ is measured from the x-axis in the x-y plane.