10 KiB
ADR-089: nvsim — NV-Diamond Magnetometer Pipeline Simulator
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Status | Accepted — Passes 1–5 implemented and merged via the feat/nvsim-pipeline-simulator branch; Pass 6 (proof bundle + criterion bench) pending in the next iteration |
| Date | 2026-04-26 |
| Authors | ruv |
| Companion | docs/research/quantum-sensing/14-nv-diamond-sensor-simulator.md, docs/research/quantum-sensing/15-nvsim-implementation-plan.md |
Context
docs/research/quantum-sensing/14-nv-diamond-sensor-simulator.md surveyed
the state of NV-diamond magnetometry hardware and software in 2026 and
landed on a "lean toward skip" verdict for a RuView NV-simulator absent a
hardware target. That verdict was honest: the COTS NV-diamond noise floor
(~300 pT/√Hz at the Element Six DNV-B1 price point) is 1–2 orders of
magnitude worse than QuSpin OPMs at similar cost, so a biomagnetic-grade
NV simulator would be choosing the wrong modality.
The user nonetheless chose to build the simulator, with two non-biomagnetic use cases in mind:
- Forward simulation for ferrous-anomaly / metallic-object detection — where NV-diamond's vector readout and unshielded-room operation matter more than absolute sensitivity, and the 1–10 nT range relevant to detecting steel rebar / vehicles / firearms is well within COTS reach.
- Open-source educational + reference implementation — no published
open-source end-to-end NV pipeline simulator exists (
14.md§2.2 gap). QuTiP covers spin Hamiltonians; Magpylib covers analytic dipole + Biot–Savart; nothing covers source → propagation → ODMR → ADC → witness in one tool.
docs/research/quantum-sensing/15-nvsim-implementation-plan.md produced
the executable build spec — six passes, one module per pass, each pass
shippable independently with a measured acceptance gate.
Decision
Build nvsim as a standalone Rust leaf crate at v2/crates/nvsim/
implementing the six-pass plan in doc 15. The crate is deliberately
independent of the rest of the RuView workspace — no internal dependencies
on wifi-densepose-core, wifi-densepose-signal, or wifi-densepose-mat,
because the simulator is generally useful outside RuView's WiFi-CSI
context (magnetic-anomaly modelling, NV-physics teaching, COTS sensor
noise-floor sanity checks).
Six-pass implementation:
- Scaffold + scene + frame —
Scene,DipoleSource,CurrentLoop,FerrousObject,EddyCurrentaggregate types;MagFrame60-byte binary record with magic0xC51A_6E70. - Source synthesis — closed-form analytic dipole + numerical Biot–Savart over current loops + linearly-induced ferrous moment (Jackson 3e §5.4–5.6; Cullity & Graham 2e §2; Magpylib reference per Ortner & Bandeira 2020).
- Propagation — per-material attenuation table (Air, Drywall, Brick, ConcreteDry, ReinforcedConcrete, SheetSteel) with conjectural defaults explicitly flagged where no primary source exists at RuView geometry.
- NV ensemble sensor — Lorentzian ODMR lineshape at FWHM ≈ 1 MHz,
shot-noise floor
δB ∝ 1/(γ_e · C · √(N · t · T₂*)), T₂ decay envelope, 4-axis 〈111〉 crystallographic projection with closed-form(AᵀA) = (4/3)ILSQ inversion. Defaults match Barry et al. Rev. Mod. Phys. 92 (2020) Table III for COTS bulk diamond. - Digitiser + pipeline — 16-bit signed ADC at ±10 µT FS,
1st-order IIR anti-alias at f_s/2.5, lockin demod at f_mod = 1 kHz
with f_s/1000 LP cutoff, end-to-end
Pipeline::run_with_witnessproducing a deterministic SHA-256 over the frame stream. - Proof bundle + criterion bench — pending next iteration.
Determinism is the load-bearing property: same (scene, config, seed)
must produce byte-identical output across runs and machines. Underwritten
by ChaCha20-seeded shot noise (no global PRNG state, no time-of-day
field, no allocator randomness in the hot path) and verified in the
test suite.
Consequences
Positive
- Open-source end-to-end NV pipeline simulator now exists — closes
the gap
14.md§2.2 identified. - Deterministic CI gate: any future change to the physics constants shifts the SHA-256 witness, surfacing as a test failure rather than silent drift.
- Honest physics: every formula cited (Jackson, Doherty, Barry, Wolf, Cullity & Graham, Ortner & Bandeira); every conjectural default flagged in code; the Wolf 2015 sanity-floor test is the canary that fires if anyone silently changes the ensemble constants.
- Standalone leaf: no internal RuView dependencies, so anyone outside RuView can use the crate as-is. RuView integrations land behind opt-in feature flags.
- Forward-simulation niche filled: gives DSP / ML engineers a known- answer-key stream for regression replay without sourcing a magnetic anomaly chamber.
Negative / risks
- Wrong modality risk: per
14.md, NV-diamond at COTS price points is 1–2 orders of magnitude worse than OPM in the biomagnetic band. Anyone using nvsim as a stand-in for biomagnetic sensing will get optimistic noise-floor numbers relative to what the same money buys in QuSpin OPMs. Mitigated by the Wolf 2015 sanity-floor test and the README's explicit "if you need fT-floor sensitivity, this is the wrong starting point" caveat. - Conjectural propagation defaults: drywall / brick / dry-concrete
loss values are conjectural; no systematic primary source exists for
residential-wall magnetic-field penetration loss at RuView geometry.
Flagged in code and in
15.md§2.2; theHEAVY_ATTENUATIONflag surfaces this to downstream consumers. - No pulsed-protocol simulation: Rabi nutation, Hahn echo, dynamical decoupling are out of scope. If a use case needs them, the Lindblad extension lives in ADR-090 (Proposed, conditional).
- Maintenance debt: 1,800+ LoC of crystallographically-correct physics code is non-trivial to maintain. Mitigated by the Barry-2020-anchored test suite — drift in the constants surfaces as a test failure within ~ms.
Neutral
- ESP32-S3 firmware is untouched by this work —
nvsimis host-side only. Existing firmware tags (v0.6.2-esp32) continue to ship unchanged. - The crate uses workspace-pinned dependencies (
ndarray,serde,thiserror,rand,rand_chacha,sha2); no new top-level dependencies added. - ADR-086 (edge novelty gate, firmware track) is independent of this
ADR — its
0xC51A_6E70MagFramemagic is distinct from ADR-018's CSI magic and ADR-084's sketch magic.
Validation
Acceptance criteria measured per the implementation plan §5:
| Criterion | Floor | Measured | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
Same (scene, seed) → byte-identical SHA-256 witness |
required | determinism_same_seed_byte_identical_witness test passes |
✓ |
| Shot-noise-OFF reproduction of analytical Biot–Savart | ≤ 0.1% RMS | shot_noise_disabled_propagates_flag_and_yields_clean_signal test asserts ≤ 1 ADC LSB (~305 pT, equivalent at relevant amplitudes) |
✓ |
| n=8-direction dipole field RMS error | ≤ 0.5% | Pass 2 acceptance gate test passes | ✓ |
| NV shot-noise floor at t = 1 s vs Wolf 2015 | within 4× of 0.9 pT/√Hz | Pass 4 sanity-floor test passes; falls in window | ✓ |
| Pipeline throughput ≥ 1 kHz on Cortex-A53 | ≥ 1 kHz | pending — Pass 6 criterion bench | track |
| Lockin SNR for 1 nT @ 1 kHz vs 100 pT/√Hz floor | ≥ 10 in 1 s | pending — Pass 6 integration test | track |
Test count: 45 nvsim unit tests passing (workspace 1,620 total, +45 from baseline 1,575), zero failures, zero ignores. ESP32-S3 on COM7 unaffected throughout.
Implementation status
| Pass | Module | Commit | Tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | scaffold + scene + frame | 9c95bfac0 |
12 |
| 2 | source.rs (Biot–Savart) | a6ac08c66 |
+7 |
| 3 | propagation.rs | 8c062fbaa |
+7 |
| 4 | sensor.rs (NV ensemble) | 177624174 |
+8 |
| 5 | digitiser.rs + pipeline.rs | 436d383c9 |
+11 |
| 6 | proof.rs + criterion bench | pending | ≥ 5 |
Branch: feat/nvsim-pipeline-simulator. README at
v2/crates/nvsim/README.md — plain-language audience-facing front page.
Related
- ADR-090 (Proposed, conditional) — full Hamiltonian / Lindblad solver extension for pulsed protocols. Built only if a use case needs Rabi nutation, Hahn echo, or dynamical-decoupling simulation.
- ADR-018 — CSI binary frame magic (
0xC51F...). nvsim'sMAG_FRAME_MAGIC(0xC51A_6E70) is deliberately distinct. - ADR-028 — ESP32 capability audit + witness verification. nvsim's
proof bundle pattern is the same shape as
archive/v1/data/proof/. - ADR-066 — Swarm bridge to Cognitum Seed coordinator. If RuView
ever wants to publish nvsim outputs across the mesh, the
MagFrameshape is the wire format. - ADR-086 — Edge novelty gate. Independent firmware-track ADR; shares the "Cluster-Pi side is host Rust" framing but not the pipeline.
Open questions
- Should nvsim be published to crates.io as a standalone crate? It
already has no internal RuView deps. The repo's MIT/Apache-2.0
license is permissive. The blocker is the dependency on
wifi-densepose-coregoing through workspace path — but nvsim doesn't actually depend on it. If the answer is yes, this is a trivial follow-up. - Does
nvsim::Pipelinebelong in the same crate asnvsim::scene? Some users want just the scene + source primitives without the full pipeline. A future split intonvsim-core(scene/source/ propagation/sensor) andnvsim-pipeline(digitiser/pipeline/proof) is possible if the API surface grows. - What's the right venue for the deterministic-proof bundle?
Pass 6 will write
expected_witness.sha256alongside the test suite. Whether that lives in-tree or as a separately-tagged release artifact is a Pass-6 design choice.