A Fluxgate Current Sensor With a U-Shaped Magnetic Gathering Shell

This paper presents a new current sensor based on fluxgate principle. The sensor consists of a U-shaped magnetic gathering shell. In the designed sensor, the exciting winding and the secondary winding are arranged orthogonally, so that the magnetic fields produced by the two windings are mutually orthogonal and decoupled. Introducing a magnetic gathering shell into the sensor is to concentrate the detected magnetic field and to reduce the interference of an external stray field. Based on the theoretical analysis and the simulation results, a prototype was designed. Test results show that the proposed sensor can measure currents up to 25 A, and has an accuracy of 0.6% and a remarkable resolution.