Fast Algebraic Calibration of MEMS Tri-axis Magnetometer for Initial Alignment Using Least Square Method

Magnetometer is an important sensor for attitude estimation in low-cost, high performance navigation systems and the application extends with inertial sensors to indoor navigation, mobile devices, health monitoring, and so on. Magnetometer calibration is an essential procedure before using it. This paper proposes a fast algebraic calibration algorithm without external reference system after obtaining an ellipsoid fitting from arbitrary rotations of MEMS magnetometer, and also proposes a calibrated measurement to calculate heading for initial alignment.