Magnetometer Compensation Scheme and Experimental Results on ZDPS-1A Pico-satellite

In a pico-satellite with small volume, measurements from on-board three-axis magnetometer (TAM) are not accurate, as it can be easily disturbed by other electronic systems. To improve its accuracy, a scheme of compensation methods is introduced in this article. The scheme is based on an improved measurement model of pico-satellite TAM, and it mainly consists of three steps. First, in satellite design stage, several techniques are recommended to simplify the afterwards compensations. Then after satellite assembly, TAM ground tests and pre-launch calibration with least-square batch filter are introduced to improve magnetometer performance. At the end, a post-launch calibration with unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is implemented with in-orbit data. The compensation scheme is used in the development of Chinese pico-satellite ZDPS-1A made by Zhejiang University. Results show that with the introduced compensation scheme, the maximum error of ZDPS-1A TAM can be reduced from 80 mG to 6 mG (1 G=10−4T).