Miniature Tri-Axis Magnetometer With In-Plane GMR Sensors

A miniature tri-axis magnetometer with in-plane giant magnetoresistance (GMR) sensors and a fluxguide was designed, implemented, and characterized in this paper. Three GMR sensor dies were aligned on a printed circuit board with their sensing directions in the same plane. By using the flux bending effect of a fluxguide, the magnetic field components in the mounting plane of GMR sensors were generated, and hence, the effective sensing directions are not in the same plane. The tilt of effective sensing direction from the mounting plane allows the device to detect the out-of-plane field component. When the device was used as an electronic compass, the digitally demodulated sensor outputs were converted into the orthogonal geomagnetic field components by using a real-time conversion process with the voltage-to-field transfer matrix. The result shows that the device is suitable for compass application. Further works to implement the similar design on a CMOS chip with integrated GMR elements and a planar modulation coil will realize a compact and easy-to-fabricate tri-axis magnetic field sensor.