Degaussing System Design Optimization

Steel ships with a magnetic signature requirement are equipped with a degaussing system to reduce their perceptibility for magnetic influence mines. To be able to reduce the magnetic signature accurately, a proper distribution of coils over the ship is essential. Finding the best distribution of coils is a complex optimisation problem, involving many potential coil locations, many possible positions and headings of the ship in the Earth magnetic field, and the unknown permanent magnetisation. Regression techniques are useful to reduce the complexity of this optimisation problem. In this paper, we discuss the complexity of the optimisation problem and how it can be reduced with the aid of Least Angle Regression (LARS).