Tri-axis magnetometer with in-plane giant magnetoresistance sensors for compass

application
Chia-Yi Chiang, Jen-Tzong Jeng, Bor-Lin Lai, Van Su Luong, and Chih-Cheng Lu

Citation: Journal of Applied Physics 117, 17A321 (2015); doi: 10.1063/1.4916036

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4916036
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/117/17?ver=pdfcov
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 JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 117, 17A321 (2015)

Tri-axis magnetometer with in-plane giant magnetoresistance sensors

for compass application
Chia-Yi Chiang,1 Jen-Tzong Jeng,1,a) Bor-Lin Lai,1 Van Su Luong,1 and Chih-Cheng Lu2
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences,
Kaohsiung 80778, Taiwan
2
Institute of Mechatronics Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 10608, Taiwan
(Presented 4 November 2014; received 22 September 2014; accepted 11 November 2014; published
online 23 March 2015)
A tri-axis magnetometer comprising three giant-magnetoresistance sensors and a cylindrical
fluxguide are implemented for compass application. The sensors are mounted on a single printed
circuit board (PCB) board with their sensing axes in a plane. A calibration process involving matrix
manipulation was employed to make the device function as a tri-axis magnetometer with orthogonal
sensing directions. The capability of the device for compass application was demonstrated by
measuring its azimuth response to the geomagnetic field about different rotation axes. The proposed
calibration technique can be used for the magnetometer system with either orthogonal or non-
C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4916036]
orthogonal sensor arrangement. V

I. INTRODUCTION output. The vector components of geomagnetic field were

retrieved using a voltage-to-field transfer matrix, which is
Magnetic sensors are useful for multiple applications,
obtained in a calibration process using a tri-axis Helmholtz
e.g., material characterization, position sensing, rotation
coil. The capability of the device for compass application
detection, current sensing, and measurement of geomagnetic
was demonstrated and the results were analyzed.
fields.1 Among various kinds of magnetic sensors, the giant
magnetoresistance (GMR) sensor is a low-cost and low-
II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS
power alternative to the fluxgate magnetometer in compass
application.2 To form a tri-axis magnetometer with the man- A. Design of the tri-axis magnetometer
ufacturing cost as low as possible, several methods3–6 are
The design of the three-dimensional magnetometer with
devised to construct a vector magnetometer using solid-state
field modulated GMR sensors and a cylindrical fluxguide is
magnetic sensors. The conventional technique is to mount
shown in Fig. 1. The three sensors are mounted on a printed
three sensors with orthogonal sensing directions.3 However,
circuit board with their sensing directions making an angle
this method suffers from the complexity and inaccuracy in
of 120 with each other. The sensors used in this work
aligning the sensing axis for the out-of-plane sensor. The al-
are the AA002 analog GMR sensors from Nonvolatile
ternative way to constitute a vector magnetometer for sens-
Electronics, Inc. The sensors consist of a Wheatstone bridge
ing the geomagnetic field is to use a fluxguide4–6 to induce
of antiferromagnetic coupled magnetoresistors, including
the field component that can be sensed by the in-plane sen-
sors. As the fluxguide is a passive component, it is much eas- two active elements for sensing and two passive elements for
ier to make in comparison to the process of assembling an reference. The response of bridge to the external magnetic
out-of-plane sensor which has many signal wires to be field is unipolar, nonlinear, and hysteretic, but it becomes
connected to other chips aligned in perpendicular orienta- bipolar, linear, and non-hysteretic when an ac modulation
tions. The fluxguide technique has been implemented suc- field and synchronous detection technique is applied.7 The
cessfully with the Hall effect sensor4 and the GMR sensor.6 36-turn modulation coils are wound around the sensors’
Nevertheless, the problem of non-orthogonality between the packages. The total resistances of modulation coils in paral-
three sensing axes remains or even deteriorates with the flux- lel are 0.51 X, and the total resistances of the three bridges in
guide. A proper calibration process is necessary for the parallel are 1.54 kX at zero field. The fluxguide, which is
non-orthogonal vector magnetometer, which is intended for
sensing the Cartesian components of geomagnetic field.
In this work, a tri-axis magnetometer comprising three
giant-magnetoresistance sensors and a cylindrical fluxguide
are implemented for tri-axis compass application. The sen-
sors and the fluxguide mounted on a printed circuit board
(PCB) board were driven by a computer-based signal genera-
tion and lock-in detection system to achieve the linear
a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail: FIG. 1. Design of the 3-axis GMR magnetometer: (a) arrangement of three
jtjeng@kuas.edu.tw. sensors and a fluxguide and (b) photograph of the device.

0021-8979/2015/117(17)/17A321/4/$30.00 117, 17A321-1 C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC

V

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 17A321-2 Chiang et al.
8 mm in diameter and 15 mm in height, is made of low-
hysteresis Ni-Zn ferrite with relative permeability more than
1000. There are two advantages of using the fluxguide. First,
the out-of-plane (z-axis) magnetic flux lines are deflected to
induce the in-plane component, making it possible to detect
the z-axis field with in-plane mounted sensors. This avoids
the complexity in assembling the GMR sensor with an out-
of-plane sensing direction. Second, the fluxguide concen-
trates the flux lines of in-plane field and hence the sensors’
sensitivities are effectively enhanced.6
The field modulation and synchronous detection were
implemented digitally with the system comprising a data ac-
quisition device (DAQ) and a computer, as shown in Fig. 2.
The output signal of GMR sensors were amplified by the
instrumentation amplifiers, INA129 from Texas Instruments,
and then digitized by the DAQ. The computer-interfaced
multifunction DAQ, model USB-6216 from the National
Instruments, generated a 100 Hz sine wave modulation signal
and digitized the output voltage of GMR sensor. The syn-
chronous detection and low-pass filtering were done digitally
by a computer program coded with LabVIEW with a phase
reference to the modulation waveform. In this way, the out-
put of GMR sensors was demodulated numerically in real
time with a latency of about 40 ms. The 5 V dc bias for GMR
sensors was given by the DAQ while the modulation signal
was sent to a power amplifier to generate a current of
17.5 mA root-mean-square amplitude for each sensor. The
total power dissipated by the three sensors is 17.6 mW,
including 16.2 mW for dc bias and 1.4 mW for ac modula-
tion field.
B. Voltage-to-field transfer matrix
As the fluxguide bends and concentrates the flux lines,
the equivalent sensing axes of the three GMR sensors are dif-
ferent from their intrinsic sensing directions and do not lie in
the same plane. When the external field B is applied in an ar-
bitrary direction, the Cartesian components Bx, By, and Bz
can be calculated from the responses of three sensors using a
linear transformation
Bx ¼ ax1 V1 þ ax2 V2 þ ax3 V3 ;
By ¼ ay1 V1 þ ay2 V2 þ ay3 V3 ;
Bz ¼ az1 V1 þ az2 V2 þ az3 V3 ;
where V1, V2, V3 are the output of three GMR sensors, and
aij are the elements of the voltage-to-field transfer matrix
with i ¼ x, y, or z and j ¼ 1, 2, or 3. According to a
FIG. 2. The driving and calibration system for the 3-axis GMR magnetometer.
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J. Appl. Phys. 117, 17A321 (2015)
magnetostatic numerical simulation, the flux line distribution
around a fluxguide was found to be independent of the per-
meability and determined by the shape of fluxguide when it
has a small aspect ratio and high enough permeability.6 In
this case, (1)–(3) is valid as long as the magnetization satura-
tion does not occur in the fluxguide material and the output
of GMR sensor is in the linear region.
When the equivalent sensing axes with respect to the
Cartesian coordinates are fixed, the nine elements aij are in-
dependent of the external field and hence they can be deter-
mined by applying calibration fields Bxx, Byy, and Bzz in
three orthogonal directions. For example, when the calibra-
tion field is Bxx along the x direction, the parameters in
(1)–(3) are: Bx ¼ Bxx, By ¼ Bz ¼ 0, V1 ¼ V1x, V2 ¼ V2x, and
V3 ¼ V3x. Using three orthogonal calibration fields, the ma-
trix relation between the calibration fields and the sensors’
outputs can be derived from (1)–(3) as follows:
2 3
Bxx 0 0
Bcal ¼ 4 0 Byy 0 5
0 0 Bzz
2 3 2 3
ax1 ax2 ax3 V1x V1y V1z
¼ 4 ay1 ay2 ay3 5  4 V2x V2y V2z 5 ¼ AV; (4)
az1 az2 az3 V3x V3y V3z
where Bcal is a matrix of calibration fields Bxx, Byy, and Bzz,
A is the voltage-to-field transfer matrix and the matrix V’s
element Vji is the output of the j-th GMR sensor in response
to the calibration field Bii along the x, y, or z direction. From
(4), it is straight forward to show that the transfer matrix can
be calculated by multiplying Bcal with V’s matrix inverse
A ¼ Bcal V1 : (5)
The above equations (1)–(5) are generally valid for a magne-
tometer consisting of three linear sensors with independent
sensing directions. When the sensing directions are orthogo-
nal to each other and along the Cartesian coordinates, the
off-diagonal elements of A are zero and the linear relations
in (1)–(3) are simplified to Bi ¼ aijVj, where aij ¼ ax1, ay2, or
az3. In this case, the sensitivity for each sensing axis is (dV/
(1) dB)i ¼ 1/aij. Here, the sensitivity, dV/dB in units of V/T,
(2) stands for the ratio between the demodulated output voltage
and the applied test field.
(3)
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Sensitivity for each sensor with and without
a fluxguide
Before using (1)–(5) to implement the vector magne-
tometer, the sensitivities for the three GMR sensors with and
without a fluxguide were calibrated with a tri-axis Helmholtz
coil, as shown in Table I. When the applied field is in-plane
and parallel to the intrinsic sensing direction, the sensitivities
for sensors #1, #2, and #3, respectively, are 127, 128, and
133 V/T without a fluxguide and 182, 180, and 188 V/T with
a fluxguide. In average, the field-in-plane sensitivities are
enhanced by a factor of 1.4 with a fluxguide. When there is a
fluxguide and the applied field is out-of-plane and
 17A321-3 Chiang et al. J. Appl. Phys. 117, 17A321 (2015)

TABLE I. In-plane and out-of-plane sensitivities with or without a fluxguide

(in units of V/T).

Sensor Without fluxguide, With fluxguide, With fluxguide,

no. in-plane field in-plane field out-of-plane field

#1 127 182 76
#2 128 180 66
#3 133 188 56

FIG. 3. Set up for geomagnetic sensing: (a) rotation about the cylindrical
perpendicular to the intrinsic sensing directions, i.e., along
axis of fluxguide and (b) rotation about the axis of sensor #3.
the z-axis, the sensitivities for sensors #1, #2, and #3 are 76,
66, and 56 V/T, respectively. The z-axis sensitivities indicate
that the equivalent sensing directions deviate from the intrin- Fig. 3(a), the rotation of the magnetometer is about the cylin-
sic sensing directions by angles of 23 , 20 , and 17 , respec- drical axis of fluxguide. For the second case shown in Fig.
tively, for sensors #1, #2, and #3 due to the flux bending 3(b), the rotation is about the intrinsic sensing axis of sensor
effect of fluxguide. The sensitivities along the equivalent #3. In order to reduce the distortion of flux lines caused by
sensing directions were found to be 198, 192, and 196 V/T the magnetic parts in the rotation stage, a non-magnetic
for sensors #1, #2, and #3. spacer 20 cm in height was put between the magnetometer
and the rotation stage. To minimize the change in tension of
B. Calibration for vector magnetometer signal cables affecting the orientation of magnetometer dur-
ing rotation, the cables were loosely suspended from above
To calibrate the vector magnetometer using (1)–(5), the and the cables’ ends near the magnetometer were tightly
out-of-plane direction was set to be the z-axis and the intrin- fixed on the rotation stage.
sic sensing axis of sensor #3 was set to be the y-axis. The cal-
ibration fields Bxx ¼ 48.1 lT, Byy ¼ 50.8 lT, and
Bzz ¼ 54.9 lT were generated by a tri-axis Helmholtz coil. D. Rotation about the cylindrical axis of fluxguide
To avoid the background geomagnetic field affecting the cal- Fig. 4(a) shows the voltage output of the three GMR
ibration result, the calibration fields were applied in both sensors rotated about the axis of fluxguide in the geomag-
positive and negative directions, and the differences in the netic field. It was found that the sensors’ responses have
output voltages for each sensor were recorded. With the cali- maxima at around the azimuth angles of 0 , 120 , and 240 ,
bration fields applied along the three orthogonal directions, which are consistent with the symmetrical arrangement of
the nine elements of matrix V in (4) were obtained and the the three sensors around the cylindrical fluxguide. The aver-
voltage-to-field transfer matrix was calculated using (5) as age dc level is about 2 mV, which can be explained by the
follows: vertical component of geomagnetic field due to magnetic
A ¼ Bcal V1
2 3 2 31
48:1 0 0 7:75 4:36 4:18
6 7 6 7
¼4 0 50:8 0 5  4 7:38 4:80 3:62 5
0 0 54:9 0:45 9:54 3:08
2 3
3:05 3:30 0:26
6 7
¼ 4 1:38 1:68 3:85 5; (6)
5:13 5:08 4:90

where the matrix elements of Bcal are in units of lT, the ele-
ments of V are in units of mV, and the resultant aij’s of A are
in units of lT/mV. The voltage-to-field transfer matrix given
in (6) were used to calculated the Cartesian components of
geomagnetic field from the output voltages V1, V2, and V3
using (1)–(3) in the following experiments.

C. Azimuth response to the geomagnetic field

To verify the feasibility of the voltage-to-field transfer
matrix for tri-axis geomagnetic field sensing, the magnetom-
eter was mounted on a manual rotation stage to measure its
azimuth response to the geomagnetic field, as shown in Fig.
FIG. 4. Azimuth response of the magnetometer rotating about the cylindrical
3. The magnetometer was rotated by 360 with a 10 interval axis: (a) Output of the three sensors and (b) Cartesian components of geo-
about two different rotation axes. For the first case shown in magnetic field.

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 17A321-4 Chiang et al.
FIG. 5. Azimuth response of the magnetometer rotating about the axis of
sensor #3: (a) Output of the three sensors and (b) Cartesian components of
geomagnetic field.
dip. This component was detected by the in-plane sensors
because of the flux bending effect of fluxguide. Fig. 4(b)
shows the Cartesian components of the geomagnetic fields
calculated from Fig. 4(a) using the linear transformations in
(1)–(3). The obtained vertical component of geomagnetic
field, Bz, was found to be 33 lT in average, and horizontal
components, Bx and By, were found to vary sinusoidally
between þ/20 lT. The azimuth responses to Bx and By are
differed by 90 , indicating that the x and y sensing axes are
orthogonal to each other. The remaining dc levels of Bx and
By may be attributed to the non-uniformity in geomagnetic
field and the intrinsic offset in the output of GMR sensors.
E. Rotation about the axis of sensor #3
To check the orthogonality between Bx and Bz axes, the
magnetometer was rotated about the intrinsic sensing axis of
sensor #3, which is defined as the By axis of magnetometer.
The azimuth responses of sensors to the geomagnetic field
for this case were shown in Fig. 5(a), and the measured
Cartesian components were shown in Fig. 5(b). In Fig. 5(a),
the maximum voltage of sensor #1 is 6.2 mV at 290 and the
minimum is 1.2 mV at 110 , while the maximum of #2 at
60 is 5.8 mV and the minimum at 240 is 0.86 mV. The
maximum of #3 is 4.6 mV at 0 and the minimum is
6.9 mV at 180 . The amplitude of azimuth response for
sensor #3 is much smaller than that for sensors #1 and #2,
which can be explained by the fact that the equivalent sens-
ing axis of sensor #3 makes a small angle of 17 with the
rotation axis. Fig. 5(b) shows the Cartesian components of
the geomagnetic fields calculated from Fig. 5(a) using
(1)–(3). It was found that the vertical component of geomag-
netic field, which is By in this case, are almost constant at
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J. Appl. Phys. 117, 17A321 (2015)
30 lT. The horizontal components, i.e., Bx and Bz, were
also found to vary sinusoidally between þ/20 lT with the
angle differed by 90 .
The fidelity of the vector magnetometer for geomagnetic
sensing was probed by checking the magnitude of geomag-
netic field, B, at various azimuth angles, as shown in the red
dashed curves in Figs. 4(b) and 5(b). For the rotation axis
about fluxguide axis, the magnitude of B is almost constant
at 38 lT, as shown in Fig. 4(b). For the case in Fig. 5(b), the
magnitude of B varies slightly around the level of 36 lT.
The azimuth variation and deviation in B’s magnitude may
be due to the non-uniformity in geomagnetic field and the
intrinsic dc offset of the GMR sensors’ output. Further works
probing the effects of field uniformity and eliminating the
offset of GMR sensor will help to improve the performance
of the vector magnetometer consisting of a fluxguide and in-
plane sensors.
IV. CONCLUSION
A vector magnetometer comprising three in-plane GMR
sensors and a fluxguide was implemented with a computer-
based driving and detection system. The ac modulation field
and digital lock-in detection technique were shown to be fea-
sible for achieving a linear vector magnetometer with negli-
gible hysteresis. The azimuth response to the geomagnetic
field revealed that the three-axis sensing can be achieved
numerically in real time using the voltage-to-field transfer
matrix. The proposed system concept can be adapted to real-
ize a micro-controller based digital compass of low cost and
high accuracy. Further works to investigate the non-ideal
effects caused by the environment will help to improve the
performance of the system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Ministry of Economic
Affairs of Taiwan under Grant No. 102-EC-17-A-01-S1-219
and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan
under Grant Nos. NSC102-2221-E-151-048-MY2 and
NSC101-2221-E-027-012.
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