Professional Documents
Culture Documents
3 Airborne Gravity Processing
3 Airborne Gravity Processing
Data Processing
Sandra Preaux
May 2016
7701 Greenbelt Rd., Suite 400
Greenbelt, MD 20770
SPreaux@sgt-inc.com
• Data & Metadata
• Processing
– Re-computing Raw Gravity
– Corrections
• Timing
• Aircraft Motion
• Tilt
• Drift
– Filtering & Trimming
– What’s not included
• Troubleshooting
Data: What is Collected
IMU GPS Antenna
Gravimeter
Absolute Gravity Tie
• Positioning System • Gravimeter Sensor Data
– GPS in Gravimeter • Meta
– GPS in IMU – Absolute Gravity Tie
– GPS Base Station – Lever Arm
• Orientation System • GPS antenna to Gravimeter
• GPS antenna to IMU
– IMU
– Height of Gravimeter above Tie
– Gravimeter Platform
Data: Aircraft
• Time • Position
– GPS does not adjust for leap – X, Y, Z
seconds • Referenced to Earth center and
– Learn more about GPS vs UTC rotation rate
or find out when leap – Latitude, Longitude, Height
seconds have been applied at • Referenced to an ellipsoid
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/le – Velocity and Acceleration
apsec.html
– Common data rates
• Orientation
• 1, 10, 20, 100 Hz – Rotation
• Pitch, Roll Yaw
• From IMU or Avionics
– Rotation Rate
– Horizontal and Vertical
Acceleration
Data: Gravimeter
• Sensor
– Raw Gravity
• Spring Tension, Beam Position & Cross Coupling
• Restoring force
– Calibration Factors
• Environment
– Temperature
– Pressure
– Ambient and in sensor box
• Platform
– Horizontal Accelerometers (Cross and Long)
– Calibration Factors
Data: Meta Data
• For Each Installation or Airport
– Lever Arms
• GPS to Gravimeter
• GPS to IMU
• Gravimeter to IMU
– Vertical distance from gravimeter to tie Spot
– Gravity and vertical gradient at tie spot
• Each Flight
– Still readings pre- and post-flight
– Start and end times of each data track
– Winds and turbulence
– Pilot actions: deicing, trim adjustments, etc.
• Data & Metadata
• Processing
– Re-computing Raw Gravity
– Corrections
• Timing
• Aircraft Motion
• Tilt
• Drift
– Filtering & Trimming
– What’s not included
• Troubleshooting
Processing
• Complicated by
– Instrumentation issues
– Timing issues
– Positioning issues
– Aircraft motion through a rotating
curvilinear coordinate system
– Discrete computation
– Variable aircraft and gravimeter
orientation
– Noise
Processing: Raw Gravity
•
Processing: Aircraft Motion
Centrifugal
Coriolis
• Variation in rotation rate Earth is very small
• Eötvös correction
– the vertical component of the Coriolis and centrifugal terms.
– Varies with latitude, altitude, speed and heading
– Simplified formula is often used for low and slow airborne or
marine surveys
• 1st term is the acceleration of the aircraft computed as
the 2nd derivative of position
Eötvös Correction
East West
Derivatives
Derivatives
1st derivative
•
Processing: Tilt
• Two ways to correct
– Derive θ
• using platform accelerometers and GPS derived
horizontal accelerations
• using GPS derived horizontal accelerations and
platform control loop or damped pendulum model
– Use the difference in the sum of accelerations
between the airplane and the meter to directly
compute the correction
Processing: Tilt
Processing: Drift
• To re-compute or not to re-compute still readings
– Still readings are not so still (or how to pick a point)
– Constant, linear or other drift model
• What is in the
soup?
– Instrument drift
– Earth tide
– ???
Processing: Drift
Processing: Drift
• Data & Metadata
• Processing
– Re-computing Raw Gravity
– Corrections
• Timing
• Aircraft Motion
• Tilt
• Drift
– Filtering & Trimming
– What’s not included
• Troubleshooting
Processing: Filtering & Trimming
• Frequency Domain Filters
– Must trim tracks first
– Discrete FFT and IFFT
• Time Domain Filters
– Trim after
– Requires convolution
• Geographic Domain Filters
– Must trim tracks first
– Requires conversion to equal spatial distribution
– Geophysical relevance
Processing: Filtering & Trimming
• Data & Metadata
• Processing
– Re-computing Raw Gravity
– Corrections
• Timing
• Aircraft Motion
• Tilt
• Drift
– Filtering & Trimming
– What’s not included
• Troubleshooting
Processing: Other Considerations
What we don’t correct
– Variable rate of Earth’s rotation
– Sensor temperature & pressure variation
– Acceleration due to rotation of platform
– Filter attenuation
Processing:
Variability in Earth’s Rotation Rate
Length of day variations are, in
reality only, 2 or 3 ms,
So, consider l1-l2=5ms,
Then at the equator,
arot = 3.3e-4 mGal
make dt equal one day, radius of
the earth 6371000m and for an
acceleration of 1 mGal
l1-l2=15.126 seconds
for acceleration of 0.1 mGal,
l1-l2=1.513 seconds Clarkplanetarium.org
• Data & Metadata
• Processing
– Re-computing Raw Gravity
– Corrections
• Timing
• Aircraft Motion
• Tilt
• Drift
– Filtering & Trimming
– What’s not included
• Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting
Or Why we process in the field
– Instrument Issues
• Timing and control electronics
• Temperature, pressure
• Cables: GPS, Power, Data
• Data Cards
– Aircraft
• Autopilot: heading hunt, porpoise, roll, old
• Vibration (particularly in twin engine aircraft)
• Pilots
• Now on to quality
assessment….