Magnetic Signature Generator for Reconstruction of Individual Vehicle Movements and Random Traffic Flow

ABSTRACT This paper describes a magnetic field generator that can reconstruct magnetic signatures of individual vehicles and a realistic traffic flow. It is composed of the microcontroller, the solenoid, and capacitors. The microcontroller generates fixed‐frequency and variable duty cycle (DTC) pulses to drive the solenoid, which produces the magnetic field. The capacitors eliminate sudden current changes through the solenoid. It is an essential tool for testing vehicle detectors that perform vehicle detection by measuring the distortion in the Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field generator receives instructions from a personal computer or laptop. This allows the user to choose the simulation parameter, such as the type and velocity of an individual vehicle or random traffic flow. To our knowledge, there are no studies that describe the simulation of magnetic signatures of vehicles. The communication interface, simple hardware design, and ability to create an arbitrary waveform of the magnetic field are novel compared with existing topologies of magnetic field generators. The magnetic signatures of four different types of vehicles, moving at 10 different velocities, were generated using the proposed generator and compared with signatures recorded by the magnetic field sensor using Pearson's correlation coefficient. Results show that the waveforms of the generated signatures are above 97% identical to those measured at velocities up to 25 km/h, above 93% at velocities up to 72 km/h, and above 85% at velocities up to 120 km/h. The RMSE, MAE, and PSNR values indicate that the reconstructed magnetic signatures are more accurate at lower velocities, but the accuracy is at a satisfactory level at higher observed velocities as well.