Multiple Underwater Objects Localization With Magnetic Gradiometry

Magnetic object localization techniques have significant applications in automated surveillance and security systems, such as aviation aircrafts or underwater vehicles. In this letter, a practical localization algorithm was presented to determine the center coordinates and magnetic moments of multiple underwater magnetic objects using a combination of the magnetic field vector and its gradient tensor data. It formulates the localization of underwater magnetic objects into a nonlinear problem, which was solved by the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. The regularization parameters in the nonlinear problem were adaptively varied in terms of information of the Jacobian matrix. Good initial values of the center coordinates and magnetic moments of this nonlinear problem were automatically determined by a novel and analytical single-object localization algorithm based on magnetic field vector and its gradient tensor. Simulations with two and three underwater objects were adopted to study the feasibility of the magnetic gradiometry technique in multiple underwater objects localization. We have demonstrated that our algorithm can produce reliable results to locate multiple underwater magnetic objects.