Real-Time Attitude-Independent Magnetometer Bias Estimation for Spinning Spacecraft

摘要

Two simple real-time attitude-independent magnetometer bias estimation algorithms were developed for spinning spacecraft. In addition to the well-known attitude-independent scalar measurement for magnetometer calibration, two auxiliary measurements were derived by making use of the spin dynamics. Simulations showed that using these auxiliary measurements increased the bias estimation accuracy as well as improved the algorithm's convergence speed. The pseudolinear Kalman filter, which used a nonlinear form of the scalar measurement equation, was the most robust algorithm in terms of both overall accuracy and convergence properties. The other benefit of the algorithms was having very few computational requirements for real-time implementation.