Establishing Requirements for Gravity Surveys for Very Accurate Inertial Navigation

Abstract

Many types of gravity surveys have been conducted or proposed to support very accurate inertial navigation. For example, gravimetry and satellite altimetry data now exist over many areas of the world and new techniques are being developed such as satellite-to-satellite tracking and airborne gravity gradiometry. This paper presents a universal approach for analyzing the navigation system improvements afforded by these surveys. Comparisons are shown of the navigation RMS errors for five survey methods. These comparisons reveal the tradeoff between gravity survey resolution and inertial navigation system accuracy.