Real-Time Tracking Gradiometer for use in an autonomous underwater vehicle for buried minehunting

We have designed and constructed a Real-Time Tracking Gradiometer (RTG) to be placed in an autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) to detect and locate buried underwater mines. This system has been assembled and is now being tested by the United States Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, FL (NSWC-PC). The UUV-RTG consists of fluxgate magnetic sensors that measure the magnetic field gradients caused by the presence of the target in the Earth´s magnetic field. These magnetic gradients can then be used to detect and locate a target with the UUV in motion. The UUV-RTG control electronics is fully digital and is computer controlled. The data acquisition is also fully digital and provides 36 channels of data at 20-bit resolution per channel. The system is controlled by an embedded low-power processor platform. We will describe the system hardware, software, and provide details of the interface with the embedded platform. The integration of the RTG with the UUV and UUV-RTG performance details will be provided by NSWC-PC in a separate paper also to be presented at this conference (Allen et al., 2005).