5DOF Electromagnetic Tracker Notes

5DOF (five-degree-of-freedom) electromagnetic trackers track a single dipole coil receiver against a spread-out array of transmitter coils. Because the single coil is symmetrical about its axis, orientation roll about the single coil's axis cannot be tracked. Orientation latitude and longitude can be tracked, as can X Y Z position.

The single receiver coil does not need to be characterized, as long as the coil is small enough to be a dipole, as the coil's gain is tracked as part of the position-and-orientation algorithm.

The single coil can be used as a transmitter, and the array as receivers, though it can be difficult to get enough signal.

There are many choices for the spread-out array:

1. Eight or more coils pointed in various directions.

2. Twelve coils in a field-and-gradient array. Think of the single coil as a transmitter. The twelve-coil array then measures the field and gradient from the single coil. By electromagnetic duality, single coil as receiver works the same. There is a direct analytic solution for position using this array. One problem is that the gradient matrix is singular when the array is in the equatorial plane of the array.