Impact of Rocks and Minerals on Underground Magneto-Inductive Communication and Localization

摘要

In this paper, we analyze the effect of different underground materials onvery-low and low frequency magnetic fields used in the contexts ofmagneto-inductive localization and communication applications, respectively. Wecalculate the attenuation that these magnetic fields are subject to whilepassing through most common rocks and minerals. Knowing the attenuationproperties is crucial in the design of underground magneto-inductivecommunication systems. In addition, we provide means to predict the distortionsin the magnetic field that impair localization systems. The proposed workoffers basic design guidelines for communication and localization systems interms of channel path-loss, operation frequencies and bandwidth. For the sakeof the reproducibility of the results, we provide the raw data and processingsource code to be used by the two research communities.