Open AccessMagnetometer heading estimation through online calibration for land navigation applications
Author(s) -
M. Iqbal,
Masood Ur Rehman,
Umar Iqbal Bhatti,
Najam Abbas Naqvi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
natural and applied sciences international journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2788-4619
DOI - 10.47264/idea.nasij/2.1.5
Subject(s) - heading (navigation) , magnetometer , calibration , gnss applications , attitude and heading reference system , computer science , remote sensing , compass , satellite , accelerometer , global positioning system , geodesy , engineering , magnetic field , geography , physics , aerospace engineering , telecommunications , operating system , cartography , quantum mechanics
For land navigation applications, the integration of the magnetometer with the combination of MEMS-INS and the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) give excellent results. During land navigation applications, the magnetometer’s heading can also be used during the GNSS outages. The calibration of the magnetometer is indispensable to calculate its accurate heading. There exist several methods for magnetometer calibration. Some are offline and some are online calibration techniques. In this paper, a calibration method is proposed to estimate the magnetometer’s parameters through online calibration in run time. In this method, the reference magnetic field is calculated from the World Magnetic Model (WMM-2020). Moreover, reference roll, pitch and heading are provided from some other sources such as GNSS, Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS), or reference INS. For different roll and pitch sectors, calibration parameters are estimated and stored. These parameters are used for magnetometer online calibration during the field testing. Both the headings obtained by the online calibration and conventional lab calibrations are analysed. Furthermore, the heading estimated through the online calibration is autonomous and fast. Subsequently, there is no user involvement in this online calibration technique and no specific movements to the device are provided. The heading obtained by novel technique is as accurate as obtained by conventional offline lab calibration.