A weak magnetic field measurement system using micro-fluxgate sensors and delta~sigma interface

Abstract

This paper presents a weak magnetic field measurement system using micro-fluxgate (FG) sensors and a sensor signal processing technique using the delta-sigma modulation in the negative feedback loop. The feedback of the lowpass filtered bitstream output of a delta-sigma modulator to the magnetic field improves system linearity, hysteresis, and stability. In spite of the fact that the second-order delta-sigma modulator is used, the third-order noise shaping can be obtained in the digital output bit-stream by the use of an integrator in the loop. This improves the SNR of the digital output. The measured noise of the implemented system meets the measured noise of the FG sensing element itself. The weak magnetic field in the range of the Earth's magnetic field is successfully measured. The nonlinearity error is less than 0.4% in the range of /spl plusmn/100 /spl mu/T.