A Triaxial Magnetometer Calibration Method with Improved Beluga Whale Optimization Algorithm

The triaxial magnetometer is a vector magnetic field sensor widely used in various fields. Due to limitations in manufacturing and installation processes, a nonorthogonal error, a scale factor error, and a zero-bias error can occur. These sensor errors significantly affect the accuracy of magnetic field measurements, so calibration is essential to ensure reliable data. This article proposes a novel error calibration method for triaxial magnetometers based on an improved Beluga Whale optimization (BWO) algorithm. In addition, three synthetic simulations, with and without noise, and with different initial search spaces and population sizes are designed to validate the proposed method. Ideally, the minimum absolute error between the calibrated and theoretical results is ${10}^{\text {-13}}$ nT. Furthermore, when the calibration method is applied to the field experiment data, the total geomagnetic field fluctuation is reduced from 600 to 9 nT, which is about 66 times smaller. Both simulation and experimental results further confirm the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed algorithm.