Improving airborne strapdown vector gravimetry using stabilized horizontal components

Integrating the deflections of the vertical along the flight line can yield geoid profiles which are valuable in the study of geodesy and geophysics, fortunately, the deflections can be measured directly by vector gravimetry. Airborne vector gravimetry using a Strapdown Inertial Navigation System and the Global Navigation Satellite System (SINS/GNSS) has shown promising results in previous studies. However, the quality of the SINS and GNSS is a major limitation; in particular, the attitude errors induced by the gyros will result in large measurement errors to the horizontal components of the gravity disturbance, and these measurement errors represent the behavior of low-frequency trend. An airborne vector gravimetry method used to remove the bias and low-frequency trends in the gravity disturbance estimated for each survey line has been developed. This method uses the horizontal components of the gravity disturbance computed from EGM2008 (Earth Gravitational Model 2008) as a reference. Firstly, the horizontal measurement results obtained from the gravimeter are divided into high- and low-frequency components according to the resolution of the EGM2008, and then, the bias and low-frequency trends of the low-frequency components are corrected using a linear fit to the EGM2008 reference data. Finally, the ultimate results can be acquired after combining the high-frequency components and the corrected low-frequency components. The data used was obtained from the SGA-WZ, which is the first strapdown airborne gravimeter developed in China. The results of this method are promising. The internal accuracy of the gravity disturbance's horizontal components for repeated survey lines exceeds 3.5 mGal, and the corresponding resolution is approximately 4.8 km based on 160-s data smoothing and an airplane averaging speed of approximately 216 km/h. After applying the WCF (Wavenumber Correlation Filter), the internal accuracy of the horizontal components exceeds 2 mGal. This can satisfy the requirement of the application in geodesy and solid earth geophysics.