Articles | Volume 5, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-5-521-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-5-521-2016
Research article
 | 
17 Nov 2016
Research article |  | 17 Nov 2016

Optimized merging of search coil and fluxgate data for MMS

David Fischer, Werner Magnes, Christian Hagen, Ivan Dors, Mark W. Chutter, Jerry Needell, Roy B. Torbert, Olivier Le Contel, Robert J. Strangeway, Gernot Kubin, Aris Valavanoglou, Ferdinand Plaschke, Rumi Nakamura, Laurent Mirioni, Christopher T. Russell, Hannes K. Leinweber, Kenneth R. Bromund, Guan Le, Lawrence Kepko, Brian J. Anderson, James A. Slavin, and Wolfgang Baumjohann

Abstract. The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS) targets the characterization of fine-scale current structures in the Earth's tail and magnetopause. The high speed of these structures, when traversing one of the MMS spacecraft, creates magnetic field signatures that cross the sensitive frequency bands of both search coil and fluxgate magnetometers. Higher data quality for analysis of these events can be achieved by combining data from both instrument types and using the frequency bands with best sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio from both sensors. This can be achieved by a model-based frequency compensation approach which requires the precise knowledge of instrument gain and phase properties. We discuss relevant aspects of the instrument design and the ground calibration activities, describe the model development and explain the application on in-flight data. Finally, we show the precision of this method by comparison of in-flight data. It confirms unity gain and a time difference of less than 100 µs between the different magnetometer instruments.

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Short summary
This paper describes frequency and timing calibration, modeling and data processing and calibration for MMS magnetometers, resulting in a merged search choil and fluxgate data product.