Optimal Trajectory Generation for Improved Magnetic Navigation
Abstract
Magnetic navigation has emerged as a promising alternative for navigation in Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied environments, leveraging geomagnetic field maps in conjunction with onboard magnetometer measurements. However, its performance is highly sensitive to trajectory-dependent observability, which limits its practical effectiveness under conventional flight paths. This paper proposes an optimal trajectory design framework for magnetic navigation that maximizes information content along the flight path. The trajectory generation problem is formulated as an optimal control problem that minimizes the posterior Cramér--Rao lower bound on the position estimation error, subject to a penalty on path length. The resulting trajectories are non-intuitive and significantly enhance the observability of the navigation system. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed optimal trajectories yield substantial reductions in estimation error compared to conventional straight-line trajectories, highlighting the critical role of trajectory design in enabling high-accuracy magnetic navigation. These findings suggest that trajectory optimization can substantially improve the viability of magnetic navigation as a robust alternative for aerospace applications in GPS-denied environments.
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BibTeX
@misc{kang2026optimal,
title = {{Optimal Trajectory Generation for Improved Magnetic Navigation}},
author = {Justin Kang and Teddy Herrera and Liraz Mudrik and Sean Kragelund and Alfonso Sciacchitano and Isaac Kaminer},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.27553},
eprint = {2609.27553},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.27553},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Optimal Trajectory Generation for Improved Magnetic Navigation
AU - Justin Kang
AU - Teddy Herrera
AU - Liraz Mudrik
AU - Sean Kragelund
AU - Alfonso Sciacchitano
AU - Isaac Kaminer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.27553
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.27553
AB - Magnetic navigation has emerged as a promising alternative for navigation in Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied environments, leveraging geomagnetic field maps in conjunction with onboard magnetometer measurements. However, its performance is highly sensitive to trajectory-dependent observability, which limits its practical effectiveness under conventional flight paths. This paper proposes an optimal trajectory design framework for magnetic navigation that maximizes information content along the flight path. The trajectory generation problem is formulated as an optimal control problem that minimizes the posterior Cramér--Rao lower bound on the position estimation error, subject to a penalty on path length. The resulting trajectories are non-intuitive and significantly enhance the observability of the navigation system. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed optimal trajectories yield substantial reductions in estimation error compared to conventional straight-line trajectories, highlighting the critical role of trajectory design in enabling high-accuracy magnetic navigation. These findings suggest that trajectory optimization can substantially improve the viability of magnetic navigation as a robust alternative for aerospace applications in GPS-denied environments.
ER -