CPC G01R 33/3628 (2013.01) [G01R 33/3678 (2013.01); G01V 3/10 (2013.01); G01V 3/17 (2013.01)] | 15 Claims |
1. A buried utility locator, comprising:
One or more omnidirectional magnetic antenna nodes;
And a receiver circuit operatively coupled to the omnidirectional antenna nodes, comprising:
an auto-tuning electronic circuit module for generating tuned output signals, comprising:
a tunable resonant electronic circuit element comprising a first capacitor and an inductor in series driven by an input signal which is a square wave at a resonant frequency for providing a tuned output signal;
a capacitive voltage divider circuit coupled between the first capacitor and inductor;
a tuning array element circuit coupled between capacitors of the capacitive divider circuit, the tuning array element including a plurality of tuning capacitors and mated switches; and
a control element including a sensing element for measuring output signal strength and a processing element for comparing previous output signal strength values stored in a non-transitory memory element to a current signal strength value and providing a corresponding control signal to control actuation of the mated switches.
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