The method is useful for operating a
metal detector including a balanced coil
system (2) with a transmit coil (21) connected to a transmit unit (1) and first and second receive coils (22A, 22B) connected to an input of a receive unit (3). The transmit unit (1) includes a transmit
signal path (tp) to which a transmit
signal (tx) having at least one fixed or selectable
operating frequency and an associated
quadrature signal (tx90°) are provided, the transmit
signal (tx) being applied to an input of a transmit
amplifier (12) which transfers the amplified transmit signal (tx) directly or via a transmit matching unit (13) to the transmit coil (21), and the receive unit (3) includes at least one receive signal path (rp) to which a modulated receive signal (rs) received from the balanced coil
system (2) is applied directly or via a receive matching unit (31) to a receive
amplifier (33), which transfers the amplified modulated receive signal (rs) directly or indirectly to a receive
amplifier (33). The modulated received signal (rs) is applied to a receive phase-sensitive
detector (34; 4534), which compares the modulated received signal (rs) with reference signals corresponding to the transmitted signal (tx) and the
quadrature signal (tx90°) to generate a demodulated complex received signal (rsc) having an in-phase received signal component (rs-I) and a quadrature received signal component (rs-Q), which are processed in a
signal processing unit (45) including at least one
signal processing path (sp), in which signal components of the complex received signal (rsc) related to the product or
noise are suppressed and signal components originating from
metal contamination are further processed.According to the invention, at least one transmit measurement channel (8) is provided, which includes a measurement amplifier (83) that receives a measurement signal (ms) taken from the transmit signal path (tp), amplifies the measurement signal (ms) and forwards it directly or indirectly to a measurement phase-sensitive
detector (84; 4584), which compares the measurement signal (ms) with reference signals corresponding to the transmit signal (tx) and the
quadrature signal (tx90°) and generates a complex measurement signal (msc) having an in-phase measurement signal component (ms-I) and a quadrature measurement component (ms-Q), and the complex measurement signal (msc) and the complex receive signal (rsc) are applied to a first correction module (451), and signal components due to instabilities of the transmit unit (1) are removed from the complex receive signal (rsc).