Low power integrated fluxgate sensor with a spiral magnetic core

Facing the new integrated applications, coordination between three parameters of the micro fluxgate sensor, namely, sensitivity, power consumption and operation range, is the key to make the applications come true. This paper reports a new low power micro integrated fluxgate sensor with low cost solution. A spiral electroplating permalloy magnetic core is introduced to reduce excitation current. Due to the design of little coils resistance and thick magnetic core, the fluxgate sensor exhibits a power consumption of 7.35 mW, a sensitivity of 117 V/T and a linear range of -200 to 200 mu T. Compared with the constant-width magnetic core and the multi rectangular ring magnetic cores, experiment results show that the spiral magnetic core benefits both smaller excitation current and higher sensitivity. The newly developed fluxgate sensor maintains high sensitivity and wide linear range with low power consumption.