An Aeromagnetic Compensation Method for Suppressing the Magnetic Interference Generated by Electric Current with Vector Magnetometer

In aeromagnetic detection, the magnetic interference conducted by electric currents in onboard electronic (OBE) equipment is gradually being taken seriously with the development of aeromagnetic compensation technology. Here, we propose a compensation method based on the synthetically total magnetic field (STMF) measured by an onboard fluxgate vector magnetometer. In this method, a compensation model is firstly built to suppress the electric current magnetic interference (ECMI) which is jointly measured by a scalar magnetometer and a fluxgate vector magnetometer. The singular spectrum analysis (SSA) method is introduced to accurately extract the characteristic signal of the ECMI from the compensated STMF. In addition, in order to better suppress the geomagnetic gradient interference, the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) model is introduced to modify the existing geomagnetic gradient compensation model. Based on these, a novel compensation model including the traditional aeromagnetic compensation model, modified geomagnetic gradient model, and ECMI compensation model is proposed. The results in the field experiment show that this model has better compensation performance than the TLG model, which is extended from the T–L compensation model.