Miniature Oriented Tri-Axial Fluxgate Magnetometer Sensor

Recent development of unmanned vehicles (UVs) demands for new technologies on tri-axial fluxgate magnetometers with ultra-low noise level, reduced size and weight. The sensitivity and noise level of traditional tri-axial fluxgate magnetometers are limited by the intrinsic noise of magnetic materials. And their size and weight are limited by their bulky magnetic cores. The objective of this proposal is to develop tri-axial fluxgate magnetometers using single-crystal Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) films to reach an ultra-low magnetic noise of ~10fT/Hz1/2 , which is ~3 orders of magnitude better than the state of the art tri-axial fluxgate products. This outstanding performance of our proposed fluxgate magnetometers will be achieved by several innovations in this project: (a) development of low-noise magnetic material YIG, (b) design and fabrication of the YIG film with quasi-elliptic edge profile, and (c) rotational excitation mode. The electronic circuits integrated on one board will drive the rotating magnetic field at the frequency of 1650-1700 Hz, detect the single with digitization bit depth of 24 bits, control the measurement, and communicate with UVs. The weight and dimension of the package will be much better than the specifications in the project topic of 2.0lbs. and 8.0in respectively. The compact fluxgate magnetometer.