Distributed Quantum Magnetic Sensing for Infrastructure-free Geo-localization
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2512.11300 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 12 Dec 2025] Title:Distributed Quantum Magnetic Sensing for Infrastructure-free Geo-localization Authors:Thinh Le, Shiqian Guo, Jianqing Liu View a PDF of the paper titled Distributed Quantum Magnetic Sensing for Infrastructure-free Geo-localization, by Thinh Le and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Modern navigation systems rely heavily on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), whose weak spaceborne signals are vulnerable to jamming, spoofing, and line-of-sight blockage. As an alternative, the Earth's magnetic field entails location information and is found critical to many animals' cognitive and navigation behavior. However, the practical use of the Earth's magnetic field for geo-localization hinges on an ultra-sensitive magnetometer. This work investigates how quantum magnetic sensing can be used for this purpose. We theoretically derive the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the estimation error of quantum sensing when using a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center and prove the quantum advantage over classical magnetometers. Moreover, we employ a practical distributed quantum sensing protocol to saturate CRLB. Based on the estimated magnetic field and the earth's magnetic field map, we formulate geo-localization as a map-matching problem and introduce a coarse-to-fine Mahalanobis distance search in both gradient space (local field derivatives) and corner space (raw field samples). We simulate the proposed quantum sensing-based geo-localization framework over four cities in the United States and Canada. The results report that in high-gradient regions, gradient-space Mahalanobis search achieves sub-kilometer median localization error; while in magnetically smoother areas, corner-space search provides better accuracy and a $4-8\times$ reduction in runtime. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2512.11300 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2512.11300v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.11300 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Thinh Le [view email] [v1] Fri, 12 Dec 2025 05:52:49 UTC (32,251 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Distributed Quantum Magnetic Sensing for Infrastructure-free Geo-localization, by Thinh Le and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-12 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)