Hand-held Magnetoresistive Transducer

The initial design of a vertical magnetoresistive head in a hand-held wand for reading magnetically encoded price tags and credit cards is discussed. The performance of the head (e.g., resolution, signal shape and amplitude, and signal-to-noise ratio) is analytically and experimentally evaluated as a function of the configuration of the sensor, head-to-medium interface, and sensor processing and materials.