| This thesis presents the development of a novel strategy for minimizing magnetic interference in a UAV system through design optimization of the position and orientation of magnetic field sources. The method, called Optimal Field Attenuation (OFA) was developed for the GeoSurv II unmanned aircraft being designed at Carleton University to perform autonomous geomagnetic surveys: to ensure high precision survey data it is necessary to eliminate the magnetic interference produced by the aircraft. Two dipole equivalence modelling (DEM) methods. Direct Dipole Modelling (DEM) and Modified Dipole Ellipse Modelling (MoDEM) were proposed. The MoDEM algorithm was developed uniquely for this thesis: it was experimentally validated and proven superior to DEM for use with OFA.;The three objectives of OFA are to attenuate, to minimize the field variation over the attenuation area, and when multiple attenuation areas are defined, to equalize the magnetic field (at each area) produced by a system of magnetic sources. OFA was experimentally validated and it was determined that field attenuation and equalization decrease, and spatial stability increases with respect to the size of the optimization area. It was also determined that increased degrees of freedom (the number of configurable sources of interference) results in improved OFA performance. |
