Combined Attitude Determination for Real-Time Geomagnetic Navigation

In this letter, we present a novel algorithm to calculate attitude with data measured by a magnetometer and an accelerometer. The calculation error for the attitude angles is not affected by the external motion acceleration parallel to the plane, which is composed of the gravitational field and geomagnetic field. The simulation and actual experimental results have revealed that the algorithm improved the accuracy of the attitude estimated in roll or pitch angles for different flight directions compared with the arc-tangent attitude solution method. Our algorithm provides a new model for attitude estimation through a vector observation method and has excellent prospects in real-time, satellite-free geomagnetic navigation.