Fluxgate Magnetometers in Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) and Surveillance Systems

The growing demand for increased security in a wide range of context requires more than ever advanced system to detect and identify possible weapons, as well as reducing the processing time.

The same apply to secure facilities/borders where detecting the influx of contraband or people entering is critical.

In many scenarios, one single detection method is not sufficient, and magnetics has the benefit of identifying threat objects, most weapons containing a certain amount of ferromagnetic material.

Military surveillance systems have two main objective – being easily deployable around temporary military positions, and alert in advance of the presence of potentially hostile elements.

Unattended ground sensors (UGS) are battery powered sensors which are designed to be discretely deployed. Detection is best achieved by combining sensing technologies, and whilst vibration and acoustic provide good detection range, they do not provide information about the presence of ferromagnetic material which could betray the presence of a weapon.

The addition of magnetics will provide this additional level of information. Due to the battery powered requirement, low power sensors are essential. Sensors such as the Mag648 or the Mag651 are ideally suited as they offer extremely both low power and extremely high sensitivity. The sensors draw a few mA and can resolve sub-nT field variations.