Skewed-redundant Hall-effect Magnetic Sensor Fusion for Perturbation-free Indoor Heading Estimation

Robust attitude and heading estimation with respect to a known reference is an essential component for indoor localization in robotic applications. Affordable Attitude and Heading Reference Systems (AHRS) are typically using 9-axis solid-state MEMS-based sensors. The accuracy of heading estimation on such a system depends on the Earth's magnetic field measurement accuracy. The measurement of the Earth's magnetic field using MEMS-based magnetometer sensors in an indoor environment, however, is strongly affected by external magnetic perturbations. This paper presents a novel approach for robust indoor heading estimation based on skewed-redundant magnetometer fusion. A tetrahedron platform based on Hall-effect magnetic sensors is designed to determine the Earth's magnetic field with the ability to compensate for external magnetic field anomalies. Additionally, a correlation-based fusion technique is introduced for perturbation mitigation using the proposed skewed-redundant configuration. The proposed fusion technique uses a correlation coefficient analysis for determining the distorted axis and extracts the perturbation-free Earth's magnetic field vector from the redundant magnetic measurement. Our experimental results show that the proposed scheme is able to successfully mitigate the anomalies in the magnetic field measurement and estimates the Earth's true magnetic field. Using the proposed platform, we achieve a Root Mean Square Error of 12.74° for indoor heading estimation without using an additional gyroscope.