Single-board low-noise fluxgate magnetometer

Abstract

Low-noise fluxgate magnetometers are normally comprised of three separate devices: a power supply, the sensor head/electronics and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This paper presents a parallel rod fluxgate magnetometer in a single printed circuit board of size = 5 × 12 cm, weight = 45 g, and sensor head average power dissipation = 40mW. The open-loop noise spectral density = 5 pTrms / √Hz @ 1 Hz, competitive with state-of-the-art devices. This is realized using a new amorphous wire core material and programmable mixed-signal electronics with low amplifier and ADC noise. We have compared the sensor performance to a low-noise observatory magnetometer and found sub-nT correlation when tracking the Y (East-West) component of the Earth’s geomagnetic field.

Publication
Journal of Applied Physics