Calibration strategy and generality test of three-axis magnetometers

Calibration strategy will influence the calibration performance of three-axis magnetometers. In this paper, three different calibration strategies (symmetrical calibration, orthogonal calibration and random calibration) are introduced and verified by simulation and experiments. The experimental system mainly consists of three-axis fluxgate magnetometer (MAG3300), 2D nonmagnetic rotation equipment and proton magnetometer. The scalar value of magnetic field was obtained with proton magnetometer and considered to be the true value. Calibration performance of three different calibration strategies were analyzed and compared. Experimental results show that after calibration the scalar RMS error has dropped 88.5%, 85.5% and 87.6% respectively. To check the generality of the estimated error parameters, another site was chosen to be a validation position, and the calibration performance of three calibration strategies were tested and compared. After calibration, the scalar RMS error has dropped 83.2%, 78.9% and 78.8% respectively. Thus the symmetrical calibration is considered to be the best calibration strategy among three calibration strategies.