Airborne LaCoste & Romberg gravimetry: a space domain approach: Fid-Bau Portal

Airborne LaCoste & Romberg gravimetry: a space domain approach

Abbasi, M. / Barriot, J. P. / Verdun, J.

Abstract This paper introduces a new approach to reduce the airborne gravity data acquired by a LaCoste & Romberg (L&R) air/sea gravimeter, or other similar gravimeters. The acceleration exerted on the gravimeter is the sum of gravity and the vertical and Eötvös accelerations of the aircraft. The L&R gravimeter outputs are: (1) the beam position, (2) the spring tension and (3) the cross coupling. Vertical and Eötvös accelerations are computed from GPS-derived aircraft positions. However, the vertical perturbing acceleration sensed by the gravimeter is not the same as the one sensed by the aircraft (via GPS). A determination of the aircraft-to-sensor transfer function is necessary. The second-order differential equation of the motion of the gravimeter’s beam mixes all the input and output parameters of the gravimeter. Conventionally, low-pass filtering in the frequency domain is used to extract the gravity signal, the filter being applied to each flight-line individually. By transforming the differential equation into an integral equation and by introducing related covariance matrices, we develop a new filtering method based on a least-squares approach that is able to take into account, in one stage, the data corresponding to all flight-lines. The a posteriori covariance matrix of the estimated gravity signal is an internal criterion of the precision of the method. As an example, we estimate the gravity values along the flight-lines from an airborne gravity survey over the Alps and introduce an a priori covariance matrix of the gravity disturbances from a global geopotential model. This matrix is used to regularize the ill-posed Fredholm integral equation introduced in this paper.