Patent ID: 7710109

Claim:
A method for the determination of the relative position of two articles, comprising: generating a magnetic field with the aid of a magnetic element of a first article; determining a first and a second measurement value with the aid of a sensor arrangement of a second article, with the first and the second measurement values being correlated with the size of the magnetic field in two different spatial directions and thus corresponding to two different magnetic field components; selecting the sensor arrangement such that the first magnetic field component is essentially parallel to the direction of relative movement of the articles and the second magnetic field component is essentially perpendicular to the relative direction of movement of the articles; using a difference signal ( 108 ) of the absolute magnitude of the first and second measured values ( 100 , 102 ) in order to determine the relative position of the first and second articles ( 10 , 12 ); and enhancing the first and the second measured values prior to determining the difference by enhancing the measured value, which corresponds to the magnetic field component essentially perpendicular to the direction of movement, more strongly than the measured value, which corresponds to the magnetic field component essentially parallel to the direction of movement.