DEPTH DETECTION OF CONDUCTING MARINE MINES VIA EDDY-CURRENT AND CURRENT-CHANNELING RESPONSE

A novel scheme for detecting the location of a metallic mine (modeled as a perfectly conducting sphere and spheroid) in marine environment is presented. This technique takes into account Eddy-Current response (ECR) induced on the conducting marine mines as well as Current-Channeling response (CCR) associated with the perturbation of currents induced in the conductive marine environment. It leverages on the unique electromotive force (EMF) induced in a receiving coil through different orientations of a transmitting coil with respect to the marine mine. Unlike conventional EM sensing apparatus which is used to carry out the measurement at just one attitude at a fixed angle with respect to buried mine, our proposed scheme consists of angular scanning via the symmetry axes of a concentric sensor over the metallic mine in order to obtain a unique normalized induced voltage determining the mine's depth. Simulated results show that this technique has the potential of extending the depth detection range compared with the current method especially in conductive marine environment up to about 2 meters away from the sensor.