One input - multi output sensors: A relevant concept?

State of the art analogue signal processing allows multi-channel systems to be commonly used to process multi-sensor systems. Nevertheless, specific situations arise where the values from only one input - especially vector physical quantities - are needed, but signal strength and/or efficiency of transducers is not enough to produce sufficient signal to noise ratio, bandwidth, or dynamic range and therefore one output might not be enough. This contribution carefully analyses the case of magnetic flux density vector field sensing where the input consists of 3 wide-bandwidth components (DC to up to 1 MHz) measured around the same space point. The instrument consists of 6 pairs of sensors arranged to obtain the field components estimations around the same sampled point in space. millitesla range measurements were achieved with a noise spectrum of 20 – 50 pT/√Hz up to 1 MHz. These observations are discussed to evaluate the relevance of the concept to other physical quantities.