Assessment of Indoor Magnetic Field Anomalies using Multiple Magnetometers

M.H. Afzal, V. Renaudin, G. Lachapelle

Abstract:	Determining orientation with respect to a known reference plays an important role in almost all modes of navigation. With the advancements in silicon chip fabrication, magnetic field can now be sensed using low cost, low power and very small sensors commonly known as magnetometers. These sensors have found their way in portable navigation devices due to their ever decreasing power consumption, size and cost and hence their applications for orientation estimation in different environments are being sought. The success of these sensors for orientation estimation is conditioned by their capacity to sense the Earth’s magnetic field in environments containing magnetic anomalies. Indeed the sources of magnetic field in manmade surroundings are numerous. Electronic devices, ferrous materials, mechanical and electrical infrastructures are such examples. These artificial fields contaminate the Earth’s magnetic field measurements and render them useless in heavily perturbed areas like indoor environments. Consequently, the magnetic field measured by the sensors needs to be compensated for these perturbations in order to estimate the true Earth’s magnetic field. To overcome these difficulties, the use of a Multiple Magnetometer Platform (MMP) is proposed and tested. The indoor magnetic field is modeled and the effects of perturbations are analyzed. Based on this model and the MMP, a perturbation detector and an Earth’s magnetic field estimator are proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms are capable of identifying and removing the effects of perturbations on Earth’s magnetic field measurement, which provides users with a better estimate of magnetic heading indoor.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010) September 21 - 24, 2010 Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon Portland, OR
Pages:	525 - 533
Cite this article:	Afzal, M.H., Renaudin, V., Lachapelle, G., "Assessment of Indoor Magnetic Field Anomalies using Multiple Magnetometers," Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010), Portland, OR, September 2010, pp. 525-533.
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