Avalanche beacon magnetic field calculations for rescue techniques improvement

Nowadays, many of the deaths on account of snow avalanches are related to an excessive delay during the rescue. The best way to locate an avalanche victim, when there is no sign, is by an avalanche beacon. The current techniques based on this device assume the condition of near field under the free-space propagation model. This work shows that this model is not adequate during the first steps of the search, and a half-space model, with air and soil layers, has to be used. In the region close to the buried victim, the classical propagation model performs well enough but depending on the orientation of the emitter avalanche beacon and the type of ARVA used to detect it, some errors are unavoidable.