Single-coil metal detector based on spiking chaotic oscillator

A remarkable feature of chaotic systems is high sensitivity, which makes them applicable to the construction of sensing devices. Various sensors can be developed based on chaotic oscillators, e.g., metal detectors, salinometers, inductive sensors, and optical sensors. Our study investigates the properties of the metal detector based on Sprott Case N chaotic oscillator equipped with a single inductive coil. A key feature of this circuit is the ability to operate in two modes: chaotic and spiking chaotic oscillations. The last fact makes it possible to consider this circuit as an artificial sensitive neuron and apply processing methods suitable for neuron activity investigation, such as interspike interval histogram analysis. In a well-controllable experiment, we explicitly demonstrate that the developed metal detector has a continuous response depending on the distance to the target and the target material. We present several efficient modifications of data processing techniques to obtain measurement results from chaotic data series. Finally, we compare the developed chaotic sensor with the sensor based on the harmonic oscillator and show that the operating range of the chaotic sensor is at least 20% larger than that of the harmonic sensor.