Magnetic transducers have recently been explored for use in impedance-based damagedetection as a part of online structural health monitoring. The basic idea is toexcite the structure being monitored through a magneto-mechanical effect due tothe sensor, and infer the structural status by examining the sensor’s impedancewhich is coupled to the impedance of the structure. Since sensors can be hungabove the surface of the structure instead of being in direct contact, the magneticimpedance approach is promising, especially for structures with complicated surfacegeometries and boundaries. They may also be deployed in a movable manner,monitoring a large area with a small number of sensor units. Nevertheless, there arecurrently practical issues concerning implementation. If a small number of turnsof wire are wound in the electrical coil of the sensor, the magneto-mechanicalcoupling between the transducer and the host structure is generally weak, yieldinglow damage detection capability. On the other hand, if we simply increase thenumber of wire turns in the magnetic sensor, its parasitic resistance and inherentinductance are both simultaneously increased, which not only introduces excessiveelectrical damping that deteriorates the damage detection performance but may alsoresult in unstable circuit dynamics. In this research, a new magnetic impedancesensing scheme based on circuit integration is proposed, i.e. a tunable capacitorand a negative resistance element are integrated to the sensor unit. Since theseadditional circuit elements can neutralize the high inductive load and reduce thelarge parasitic resistance of the transducer, the signal-to-noise ratio in the sensormeasurement can be significantly increased. Moreover, circuit integration canamplify the damage-induced change in magnetic admittance, leading to muchenhanced damage detection sensitivity. Correlated numerical and experimentalstudies are carried out to validate this new magnetic impedance sensing system.