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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.

In the method of target localization based on magnetic anomalies, the scheme of vector field localization and experimental research are significant. Because more information of magnetic field can be measured by vector sensors, the position of the target can be directly calculated by the equations. However, the vector magnetic anomaly generated by the target is difficult to measure. And the detection range is small due to the low sensitivity of vector sensors. A method for target localization based on the total geomagnetic field is proposed. Its advantages are that the measurement of total magnetic field is not affected by the orientation of the total field sensors and the detection range is large due to their high sensitivity. In this paper, we focus on the localization using the array with the total field magnetometers. And we design an array structure with the total field magnetometers. Then, we obtain the higher order nonlinear equations for the target localization based on this array. The numerical method is used to solve the equations. Meanwhile, we present a method for eliminating the effect of geomagnetic field variations and uneven spatial distribution. In suburban roads, localization experiments were carried out. And the results showed that the relative error of target localization is less than 5% by using the proposed method.

Generally, a magnetic target can be described with six parameters, three describing the position and three describing the magnetic moment. Due to a lack of sufficient components from one magnetometer, we need more than one magnetometer when locating the magnetic target. Thus, a magnetometer array should be designed. The baseline of the array is an important factor that affects the localization accuracy of the target. In this paper, we focus on the localization of a static target by using a scalar magnetometer array. We present the scalar magnetometer array with a cross-shaped structure. We propose a method of determining the optimal baseline according to the parameters of the magnetometer and detection requirements. In the method, we use the traditional signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as a performance index, and obtain the optimal baseline of the array by using the Monte Carlo method. The proposed method of determining the optimal baseline is verified in simulation. The arrays with different baselines are used to locate a static magnetic target. The results show that the location performance is better when using the array with the optimal baseline determined by the proposed method.