In this paper, we describe the techniques used to calibrate the individual (non-integrated) magnetometers onboard the Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) satellite and describe a technique to characterize the residual dipole of small satellites. Magnetometer calibration is a critical part of RAX’s magnetic-based attitude determination system. Our technique uses vector knowledge of the local magnetic fi...

Seafloor observatories have been the important way to observe the ocean, but applying the magnetometers to it still remain technical problems. This paper presents a smart cheaper magnetometer which was designed as the sensor node for a small seafloor network for geomagnetic observation. System design was described in modules at first. The calibration method of the whole system so as to alleviat...

Over the last decade or so micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology has been widely used in many navigation applications such as pedestrians, aircraft, land vehicles and robots, because of its advantages in terms of price, accuracy and size. This paper presents a novel low-cost multisensor hardware platform known as “NAVCON”, which is designed for navigation and control of quad-rotor un...

The research presented in this report focuses on the Whorl II spacecraft simulator in Virginia Tech’s Space Systems Simulation Laboratory (SSSL). The goal of this research is to improve the reliability and accuracy of the magnetometer aboard Whorl II that is used for attitude determination. Magnetic interference surrounding the simulator causes unacceptable margins of error its perceived attitu...

The calibration parameters of a vector magnetometer are estimated only by the use of a scalar reference magnetometer. The method presented in this paper differs from those previously reported in its linearized parametrization. This allows the determination of three offsets or signals in the absence of a magnetic field, three scale factors for normalization of the axes and three non-orthogonalit...