Apparatus and methods for obtaining increased sensitivity, selectivity and dynamic range in property measurement using magnetometers

A method of selection of a magnetometer winding structure and operating point for measuring one or more preselected properties of a material comprising the steps of:

• a) defining physical and geometric properties for the material including preselected properties of the material;
• b) defining magnetometer operating point parameters, winding geometry and winding configuration;
• c) inputting the material properties and the magnetometer operating point parameters, winding geometry and configuration into a model to compute an input/output terminal relation value;
• d) adjusting the preselected properties of the material to compute another terminal relation value;
• e) computing the Jacobian elements which are measures of the variation in said terminal relation values due to the variation in the preselected material properties;
• f) computing a singular value decomposition for the Jacobian elements to obtain singular values, singular vectors and condition number of the Jacobian elements;
• g) evaluating sensitivity, selectivity and dynamic range of the magnetometer winding structure and operating point using the singular values, singular vectors and condition numbers for material property estimate requirements;
• h) repeating steps c-g with adjusted magnetometer operating point parameters and winding geometry and configuration until the material property estimate requirements are achieved.