Extracting target orientation for different electromagnetic induction sensing geometries

Electromagnetic induction (EMI) sensors are commonly used to detect and locate buried metallic objects such as landmines, but they are capable of extracting much more information about objects, e.g., location and magnetic polarizability. Recent research has led to an effective inversion method to extract target orientation by finding the tensor representation of the target [1-3]. The “tensor amplitude” extraction techniques also have an important capability that has not been fully examined until now, and that is the ease with which they can be used with a variety of EMI sensor geometries. This paper will examine how making slight alterations to an existing sensor geometry can dramatically increase its effectiveness, while still using the “tensor amplitude” extraction to accurately and efficiently determine the unknown parameters of a metallic object.