Design and characterization of a microwire fluxgate magnetometer

This paper deals with the characterization of fluxgate magnetometers that adopt a FeSiB microwire asmagnetic core. The proposed device has a number of peculiarities that make this sensor very interesting.In fact this magnetometer affords the detection of weak magnetic targets with a very high spatial resolutionand low power consumption. The readout strategy is based on the use of the “Residence TimesDifference”; the DC magnetic field information is derived from the temporal positions of the outputwaveform spikes. In the paper an accurate device characterization is performed with particular regardsto sensor resolution, sensitivity and power consumption; moreover, some comparisons between the FeSiBmicrowire fluxgate and a “ribbon” Magnetic Alloy FR4-fluxgate, previously developed by the authors, arepresented. Finally exhaustive experimental characterization results demonstrate the possibility to usethe microwire fluxgate as a low power system (with high spatial resolution) operating with a sinusoidalbias current of 5mApp.