Efficient and rapid accuracy estimation of the Earth's gravitational field from next-generation GOCE Follow-On by the analytical method

Abstract

Firstly, a new analytical error model of the cumulative geoid height using the three-dimensional diagonal tensors of satellite gravity gradiometry (SGG) is introduced based on the variance-covariance matrix principle. Secondly, a study for the requirements demonstration on the next-generation GOCE Follow-On satellite gravity gradiometry system is developed using different satellite orbital altitudes and measurement accuracies of satellite gravity gradiometer by the new analytical error model of SGG. The research results show that it is preferable to design satellite orbital altitudes of 300 km–400 km and choose the measurement accuracies of 10−13/s2–10−15/s2 from satellite gravity gradiometer. Finally, the complementarity of the four-stage satellite gravity missions, including past CHAMP, current GRACE, and GOCE, and next-generation GOCE Follow-On, is contrastively demonstrated for precisely recovering the Earth's full-frequency gravitational field with high spatial resolution.