Performance of Two Different Flight Configurations for Drone-Borne Magnetic Data

Area of Science:

• Geophysics
• Geophysical instrumentation
• Electromagnetism

Background:

• Drone-borne magnetometry is hindered by magnetic and electromagnetic interference from the drone.
• Suspending magnetometers can mitigate interference but may affect flight stability or introduce data oscillations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of magnetometer placement on drone-borne magnetic survey data quality.
• To evaluate noise filtering techniques for drone-based magnetic measurements.

Main Methods:

• Conducted two drone-borne magnetic surveys using a cesium-vapor magnetometer (1000 Hz sampling frequency).
• Tested magnetometer placement: fixed to landing-sled (0.5 m) and suspended 3 m below the drone.
• Applied Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) analysis for noise filtering.

Main Results:

• Both configurations, when processed with CWT, yielded magnetic data comparable to ground-based control datasets.
• Spectral characteristics and modeled source parameters were analogous across flight configurations and ground data.
• Careful data processing enabled high-quality magnetic data acquisition in both tested configurations.

Conclusions:

• Drone-generated noise in magnetic surveys can be effectively filtered using CWT analysis.
• Both near-drone and suspended magnetometer configurations can produce high-quality data.
• The optimal configuration choice depends on specific survey objectives and operational conditions.