An Optimized Heading De-Noising Method of the Polarization Compass for Improving Orientation Accuracy

In recent years, the polarization compass (PC) has been extensively applied in the field of autonomous navigation due to its strong autonomy and anti-interference characteristics. Nevertheless, the existing research shows that the PC with high extinction ratio polarization sensor still offers poor orientation accuracy since there is a great quantity of noise in the heading data output from the compass. Here, we present a novel and promising scheme to denoise heading data to improve deficiency in heading data denoising of existing research. The purpose of this study aims to solve the problem that the orientation accuracy of PC caused by noise needs to be improved. Concretely, the major points of this research include an effective separation strategy of noise and useful signal based on the optimized variational mode decomposition (OVMD) and an effective heading data denoising method based on an adaptive singular spectrum analysis (AD-SSA). OVMD based on the center frequency is employed to decompose the original noisy heading data into a finite number of band-limited data intrinsic mode functions (DIMFs) so that the best number of decomposed layers for the noising data can be obtained. Subsequently, the above decomposed DIMFs are divided into low-frequency signal components, mixed components, and high-frequency noise components exploiting the maximum similar eigenvalue of the autocorrelation matrix corresponding to each DIMF as a classification method. An AD-SSA uses the correlation coefficient to further suppress the noise in classified DIMFs. These approaches are combined effectively to improve the orientation accuracy of the PC significantly and very contribute to the navigation application of unmanned mobile platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Compared to existing prior arts, the effectiveness of the proposed heading denoising scheme for the PC is demonstrated through the results obtained from the heading data sets on two representative sunny and dust days.