A Novel Methodology for Stray Field Insensitive xMR Angular Position Sensors

Abstract

Existing magnetoresistive angular position sensors possess an outstanding angle accuracy as well as a high robustness against challenging environmental conditions. Thus, this class of sensors plays an important role in automotive and industrial applications. However, due to upcoming international standards future angular measurement systems must be insensitive against magnetic stray fields. Unfortunately, state of the art magnetoresistive angle sensors provide only a limited stray field suppression. In the following a novel methodology is presented, which is able to eliminate the impact of stray fields with nearly arbitrary magnitude. Furthermore, our concept is based on well-established magnetoresistive angular sensing setups. From this follows, that the presented technique can be implemented easily. In this paper, the measurement principle as well as measurement results are presented.