Patent ID: 7038458

Claim:
A magnetic anomaly homing system, comprising: a non-magnetic platform; a planar array of four triaxial magnetometer (TM) sensors coupled to said platform, said four TM sensors positioned at the vertices of a rectangular parallelogram lying in a plane that is one of (i) parallel to a direction of motion of said platform and (ii) perpendicular to said direction of motion, each of said four TM sensors sensing a magnetic field thereat due to the presence of a magnetic anomaly, said magnetic field being sensed in terms of three mutually orthogonal dimensional components thereof; and processing means coupled to each of said four TM sensors for using said magnetic field so-sensed at each of said four TM sensors to generate complete gradient tensors and corresponding scalar gradient contractions thereof for four two-axis gradiometers formed by said array, wherein said scalar gradient contractions for each of said four two-axis gradiometers use magnetic field data associated with endpoints of two nonparallel axes of said array, and wherein said scalar gradient contractions define guidance control parameters used to steer said platform toward the magnetic anomaly.