AUTHOR=Toepfer Simon , Narita Yasuhito , Heyner Daniel , Motschmann Uwe 

TITLE=The Capon Method for Mercury's Magnetic Field Analysis

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics

VOLUME=8

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00249

DOI=10.3389/fphy.2020.00249

ISSN=2296-424X

ABSTRACT=<p>Characterization of Mercury's internal and external magnetic field is one of the primary goals of the magnetometer experiment on board the BepiColombo MPO (Mercury Planetary Orbiter) spacecraft. A novel data analysis tool is developed to determine the Gauss coefficients in the multipole expansion using Capon's minimum variance projection method. The construction of the estimator is presented along with a test against the numerical simulation data of Mercury's magnetosphere and a comparison with the least square fitting method shows, that Capon's estimator is in better agreement with the coefficients, implemented in the simulation, than the least square fit estimator.</p>