A Method of Magnetometer Relative Reference Calibration for Micro-Nano Satellite and Its Application in Orbit

For a low-cost micro-nano satellite that uses magnetometer as the core sensor of attitude determination system, a calibration method of relative reference between multiple magnetometer is proposed. The influence of satellite magnetic environment on magnetic field intensity measurement is studied. After considering remanence, induction and installation deviation, an accurate measurement model of magnetometer is proposed. Without introducing other high-performance attitude sensors, the relative relationship between the measurement data of different magnetometer is derived, and a magnetometer relative reference calibration method based on the least square method is proposed. Mathematical simulation shows that the proposed method reduces the relative measurement error of the magnetometer from 2000 nT to 50 nT, and then uses the telemetry data of the satellite in orbit to calibrate several magnetometer of the satellite. After injecting new parameters, the attitude difference of satellites with different magnetometer as the reference decreases from 16 degrees to less than 2 degrees, indicating that the consistency of the magnetometer reference has been significantly improved, which verifies the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed method.