Blind source separation for magnetic anomaly navigation

A system comprising:

• a vehicle;
• a navigation processing unit onboard the vehicle, the navigation processing unit including an Earth magnetic model, a sensor compensation module, a navigation filter, and a magnetic anomaly map storage;
• and
• a plurality of magnetometers onboard the vehicle and in operative communication with the sensor compensation module, the magnetometers spatially separated from each other;
• wherein the navigation filter hosts one or more magnetic anomaly navigation algorithms, the navigation filter in operative communication with the sensor compensation module and the magnetic anomaly map storage;
• wherein the sensor compensation module hosts a program module having instructions for performing a method to provide enhanced magnetic anomaly navigation for the vehicle, the method comprising:
• performing data acquisition by recording temporally synchronized magnetometer measurements from the magnetometers;
• performing blind source separation with a set of constraints including:
• a far-field assumption, in which a signal of interest that includes Earth magnetic field and a magnetic anomaly, is assumed to be measured quasi-identically across the magnetometers;
• and
• spatial coherence, which exploits known spatial relationships between the magnetometers to differentiate between global and local interference sources;
• performing interference source elimination to zero out or reduce irrelevant interference sources;
• reconstructing the signal of interest to generate enhanced magnetic field measurements;
• and
• feeding the enhanced magnetic field measurements to the one or more magnetic anomaly navigation algorithms in the navigation filter.