A general model of RCR modification and its geoid determination

Abstract

The Stokes operator is used to transform gravity anomaly into geoid, and the remove-compute-restore (RCR) technique and Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH) method are commonly employed in calculating the geoid. The KTH method estimates the geoid by (least-squares modification of Stokes formula) LSMSF, while the traditional RCR technique maintains its unbiasedness mathematically. This study modifies the RCR technique by adding a set of adjustment parameters, and proposes a general model of RCR modification to obtain the optimal solution. This model is unbiased when taking the adjustment parameters as zeros, which explains its generalization, and the equivalence between it and LSMSF is illustrated. The additive corrections for the RCR modification are re-derived. The test in Northeast China indicated that the proposed model can reach high accuracy at small integration radius, and refine the quasi-geoid with the best precision comparing with other methods.