Analysis of the sensitivity of AC magnetic ranging systems to environmental configurations

The influence of the environmental configuration on AC magnetic distance-measurement systems, which are based on inductive coupling of tuned resonators, is experimentally analyzed. The main aspects that affect accuracy in such systems are the conductivity of the terrain and the presence of metallic materials near the resonators. It is shown that such aspects are frequency-dependent, and a tradeoff is to be considered between maximum operating range and error. Moreover, a strategy to detect if measurement results are corrupted by environmental configuration is presented. This strategy is crucial to improve the integrity of positioning systems.