New results in airborne vector gravimetry using strapdown INS/DGPS

A method for airborne vector gravimetry has been developed. The method is based on developing the error dynamics equations of the INS in the inertial frame where the INS system errors are estimated in a wave estimator using inertial GPS position as update. Then using the error-corrected INS acceleration and the GPS acceleration in the inertial frame, the gravity disturbance vector is extracted. In the paper, the focus is on the improvement of accuracy for the horizontal components of the airborne gravity vector. This is achieved by using a decoupled model in the wave estimator and decorrelating the gravity disturbance from the INS system errors through the estimation process. The results of this method on the real strapdown INS/DGPS data are promising. The internal accuracy of the horizontal components of the estimated gravity disturbance for repeated airborne lines is comparable with the accuracy of the down component and is about 4–8 mGal. Better accuracy (2–4 mGal) is achieved after applying a wave-number correlation filter (WCF) to the parallel lines of the estimated airborne gravity disturbances.