Which magnetometer is suitable for vehicle detection?

[Peter Slaughter]

Which magnetometer is suitable for vehicle detection? I read in another forum that one uses magnetometer with an infrared sensor for this purpose. What do you think of this approach? If then, which magnetometer should be used? Scalar or vector? I have heard that scalar ones measure the total strength of the magnetic field to which they are subjected. Also I read some blogs in the site gemys.ca regarding this. Can anyone explains how this actually work? And which principle is used in its volcanology application?

 

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[geowizard]

Hi Peter,

Are you detecting a vehicle with the magnetometer or do you want to use the magnetometer in a vehicle? It isn't clear what you are asking.

-Geowizard

 

[woof!]

Ordinary single-axis fluxgate mags have been used for many years for detecting vehicles for purpose of traffic signal control. Naked Hall Effect is not sensitive enough to do that same job reliably, but if you sandwich it between a couple of pole pieces to create a "magnetic antenna", that also has been done commercially. Magnetoresistive could probably be done that same way. GMR could probably be done without the pole pieces but GMR and related technologies are very quirky stuff.

If the issue is portable magnetometry for geophysics purposes, then it's either fluxgate or proton precession. If you want vector data, you're stuck with fluxgate, proton mags give the amplitude of the field vector but not its orthogonal components.