Geomagnetic Reference Sensor System (GRSS) for Air Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW)

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I study deals with the development of a noise-cancellation technique that employs a reference sensor to reduce geomagnetic noise at an airborne MAD sensor. This effort will include a survey of the various magnetic-field sensors that meet the requirements for use in an air-dropped, undersea geomagnetic reference sensor system (GRSS). The sensor system will comprise an expendable buoy with a total-field magnetometer that will be deployed by the ASW aircraft immediately prior to the localization phase of the mission. Various suspension systems and deployment schemes will be studied to determine the optimum configuration for this application. The performance enhancement will be validated for various geometries, search platforms, targets, geomagnetic-noise levels, and geology-noise levels.