Soft- and hardware upgrade of the mobile coil facility

The Mobile Coil Facility (MCF) is a measurement facility for magnetic characterization. Within the ESA contract 4000103913 the MCF was upgraded in order to improve the measurement process as well as to extend the modelling capabilities. This paper summarizes the upgraded aspects of the facility with a focus on the new algorithms implemented for model fitting, including a Deterministic Optimization Method (DOM) based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, a Random Search Method (RSM) based on a particle swarm optimization and a RSM based on evolutionary strategy. The following section starts with a general overview of the facility, followed by a brief summary of the mechanical, electrical and general software upgrades. Afterwards the new fitting algorithms are presented and discussed, followed by a comparison of the algorithms for a simulated test case.