Calculation and correction of magnetic object positioning error caused by magnetic field gradient tensor measurement

Magnetic field gradient tensor measurement is an important technique to obtain position information of magnetic objects. When using magnetic field sensors to measure magnetic field gradient as the coefficients of tensor, field differentiation is generally approximated by field difference. As a result, magnetic objects positioning by magnetic field gradient tensor measurement always involves an inherent error caused by sensor sizes, leading to a reduction in detectable distance and detectable angle. In this paper, the inherent positioning error caused by magnetic field gradient tensor measurement is calculated and corrected by iterations based on the systematic position error distribution patterns. The results show that, the detectable distance range and the angle range of an ac magnetic object (2.44 Am² @1 kHz) can be increased from (0.45 m, 0.75 m), (0°, 25°) to (0.30 m, 0.80 m), (0°, 80°), respectively.