A portable magnetic anomaly sensing system includes a non-magnetic support
structure defined by a rigid beam and a rigid frame coupled thereto.
Triaxial magnetometer (TM) sensors are rigidly coupled to the frame with
one TM sensor being positioned at each vertex of a cubic space. Each TM
sensor is positioned such that all respective X,Y,Z magnetic sensing axes
are mutually parallel to one another. A data acquisition system is
mechanically coupled to the beam such that any magnetic elements of the
data acquisition system do not adversely affect accuracy of the TM
sensors. The data acquisition system samples the sensed magnetic field
data from all TM sensors synchronously with a timing signal. A processor
is mechanically coupled to the beam such that any magnetic elements of
the processor do not adversely affect accuracy of the TM sensors. The
processor applies a magnetic scalar triangulation and ranging (STAR)
processing scheme to the digitized magnetic field data in order to
determine a position vector and a magnetic moment vector. One or more
output generation devices are used to generate a human-discernable output
to the position vector and the magnetic moment vector.