Influence of Alfvénic characteristics on calibration of satellite magnetometer

The zero offset of the fluxgate magnetometer in satellite orbit will be changed due to several factors. For this reason, the Davis-Smith method is proposed to calculate the zero compensation of the magnetometer based on the feature that the shear Alfvén waves do not change the total magnetic field strength. In fact, there is no pure Alfvén waves in the interplanetary space. In this paper, numerical simulation is used to analyze the influence of the amplitude, period and phase of the Alfvén waves and the time length of the data window on the zero offset of the magnetometer calculated by the Davis-Smith method in the presence of weak compressional waves. We find that Alfvén waves can produce a non-negligible error in the calculation of zero compensation only when its period is the same as the period of the compressional wave. The greater the amplitude of Alfvén waves, the smaller the error of the zero offset. The error of the zero offset is also affected by the initial phase of the Alfvén wave. In addition, the error of the zero offset tends to decrease to its true value for the longer the data window length.