Development of Electronic Compass Using 2-Axis Micro Fluxgate Sensor

This paper describes an electronic compass using micromachined X- and Y-axis micro fluxgate sensors which were perpendicularly aligned each other to measure X- and Y-axis magnetic fields respectively. The fluxgate sensor was composed of rectangular-ring shaped magnetic core and solenoid excitation(49 turns) and pick-up(46 turns) coils. Excitation and pick-up coil patterns which were formed opposite to each other wound the magnetic core alternatively to improve the sensitivity and to excite the magnetic core in an optimal condition with reduced excitation current. The magnetic core has DC effective permeability of ~1000 and coercive field of ~0.1 Oe. The magnetic core is easily saturated due to the low coercive field and closed magnetic path for the excitation field. To decrease the difference of induced second harmonic voltages from X- and Y-axis, excitation condition of 2.8 $V_{P-P}$ and 1.2 MHz square wave was selected. Excellent linear response over the range of -100 $\mu$T to +100 $\mu$T was obtained with 210 V/T sensitivity. The size of each micro fluxgate sensor excluding pad region was about 2.6${\times}$1.7 $mm^2$ and the power consumption was estimated to be 14 mW.W.

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