In-Field Practical Calibration of Three-Axis Magnetometers

Junping Cai, Niels L. Andersen, Cristian Malureanu

Abstract:	Magnetometers measure the intensity of the Earth magnetic field, and are widely used in connection with vehicle navigation systems and many other engineering applications. Together with inertial navigation systems consisting of three-axis accelerometers and three-axis rate gyros, an extended application, such as human and animal body motion tracking can be realized. Unfortunately the data from low cost sensors is overlapped with drifts which accumulate in time, and they are also sensitive to the environmental parameters, which often make it necessary to perform the sensor calibration just before use. One of the ways for calibration of magnetometers is to find various parameters in the laboratory, having the sensors subject to controlled magnetic field intensity. This involves complex equipments, impractical for in-field use. This paper describes one procedure for calibrating threeaxis magnetometers; it uses only the Earth’s magnetic field vector in the geographic area where the calibration is being performed, together with a mathematic algorithm. It takes only a few minutes and allows the determination of the bias, the scale factor and non-orthogonality parameters at the same time. An experimental validation of the procedure and the algorithm is presented at the end of the paper.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2010 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 25 - 27, 2010 Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	67 - 73
Cite this article:	Cai, Junping, Andersen, Niels L., Malureanu, Cristian, "In-Field Practical Calibration of Three-Axis Magnetometers," Proceedings of the 2010 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2010, pp. 67-73.
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