Shaokun Cai

The first airborne scalar gravimetry system based on SINS/DGPS in China

China has developed an airborne gravimetry system based on SINS/DGPS named SGA-WZ, the first system in which a strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) has been used for airborne gravimetry in China. This gravity measurement system consists of a strap-down inertial navigation system and a differential global positioning system (DGPS). In April 2010, a flight test was carried out in Shandong Province of China to test the accuracy of this system. The test was designed to assess the repeatability and accuracy of the system. Two repeated flights and six grid flights were made. The flying altitude was about 400 m. The average flying speed was about 60 m/s, which corresponds to a spatial resolution of 4.8 km when using 160-s cutoff low-pass filter. This paper describes the data processing of the system. The evaluation of the internal precision is based on repeated flights and differences in crossover points. Gravity results in this test from the repeated flight lines show that the repeatability of the repeat lines is 1.6 mGal with a spatial resolution of 4.8 km, and the internal precision of grid flight data is 3.2 mGal with a spatial resolution of 4.8 km. There are some systematic errors in the gravity results, which can be modeled using trigonometric function. After the systematic errors are compensated, the precision of grid flight data can be better than 1 mGal.

Long-Term Stability of the SGA-WZ Strapdown Airborne Gravimeter

Accelerometers are one of the most important sensors in a strapdown airborne gravimeter. The accelerometers drift determines the long-term accuracy of the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS), which is the primary and most critical component of the strapdown airborne gravimeter. A long-term stability test lasting 104 days was conducted to determine the characteristics of the strapdown airborne gravimeters long-term drift. This stability test was based on the first set of strapdown airborne gravimeters built in China, the SGA-WZ. The test results reveal a quadratic drift in the strapdown airborne gravimeter data. A drift model was developed using the static data in the two end sections, and then this model was used to correct the test data. After compensating for the drift, the drift effect improved from 70 mGal to 3.46 mGal with a standard deviation of 0.63 mGal. The quadratic curve better reflects the drifts real characteristics. In comparison with other methodologies, modelling the drift as a quadratic curve was shown to be more appropriate. Furthermore, this method allows the drift to be adjusted throughout the course of the entire campaign.

A new method for land vehicle gravimetry using SINS/VEL

The use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data for land vehicle gravimetry tests is challenged by complicated environments. A new approach for land vehicle gravimetry using a Strapdown Inertial Navigation System and velometer-integrated navigation computation (SINS/VEL) without using GNSS information has been put forward. Aided by the velometer with continuous longitudinal velocity output instead of GNSS signals, a SGA-WZ02 strapdown gravimeter that used the SINS/VEL method was tested in 2015. Four repeated lines were measured along a south-north direction highway in Eastern Changsha to verify the new method’s feasibility and performance. The gravity disturbance results showed an internal accuracy in scalar gravimetry about 1.17 mGal and 1.91 mGal for external accuracy assessment, with a spatial resolution of 1.7 km. Comparing this new method with the traditional SINS/GNSS gravimetry approach, it appeared that the results using SINS/VEL showed comparable internal and external accuracy. Theoretical analysis and practical test results showed that the new method was feasible for gravity determination by land dynamic vehicle.

Optimized Design of the SGA-WZ Strapdown Airborne Gravimeter Temperature Control System.

The temperature control system is one of the most important subsystems of the strapdown airborne gravimeter. Because the quartz flexible accelerometer based on springy support technology is the core sensor in the strapdown airborne gravimeter and the magnet steel in the electromagnetic force equilibrium circuits of the quartz flexible accelerometer is greatly affected by temperature, in order to guarantee the temperature control precision and minimize the effect of temperature on the gravimeter, the SGA-WZ temperature control system adopts a three-level control method. Based on the design experience of the SGA-WZ-01, the SGA-WZ-02 temperature control system came out with a further optimized design. In 1st level temperature control, thermoelectric cooler is used to conquer temperature change caused by hot weather. The experiments show that the optimized stability of 1st level temperature control is about 0.1 °C and the max cool down capability is about 10 °C. The temperature field is analyzed in the 2nd and 3rd level temperature control using the finite element analysis software ANSYS. The 2nd and 3rd level temperature control optimization scheme is based on the foundation of heat analysis. The experimental results show that static accuracy of SGA-WZ-02 reaches 0.21 mGal/24 h, with internal accuracy being 0.743 mGal/4.8 km and external accuracy being 0.37 mGal/4.8 km compared with the result of the GT-2A, whose internal precision is superior to 1 mGal/4.8 km and all of them are better than those in SGA-WZ-01.

An SINS/GNSS Ground Vehicle Gravimetry Test Based on SGA-WZ02

In March 2015, a ground vehicle gravimetry test was implemented in eastern Changsha to assess the repeatability and accuracy of ground vehicle SINS/GNSS gravimeter—SGA-WZ02. The gravity system developed by NUDT consisted of a Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS), a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) remote station on test vehicle, a GNSS static master station on the ground, and a data logging subsystem. A south-north profile of 35 km along the highway in eastern Changsha was chosen and four repeated available measure lines were obtained. The average speed of a vehicle is 40 km/h. To assess the external ground gravity disturbances, precise ground gravity data was built by CG-5 precise gravimeter as the reference. Under relative smooth conditions, internal accuracy among repeated lines shows an average agreement at the level of 1.86 mGal for half wavelengths about 1.1 km, and 1.22 mGal for 1.7 km. The root-mean-square (RMS) of difference between calculated gravity data and reference data is about 2.27 mGal/1.1 km, and 1.74 mGal/1.7 km. Not all of the noises caused by vehicle itself and experiments environments were eliminated in the primary results. By means of selecting reasonable filters and improving the GNSS observation conditions, further developments in ground vehicle gravimetry are promising.

Strapdown Airborne Gravimetry Quality Assessment Method Based on Single Survey Line Data: A Study by SGA-WZ02 Gravimeter

Quality assessment is an important part in the strapdown airborne gravimetry. Root mean square error (RMSE) evaluation method is a classical way to evaluate the gravimetry quality, but classical evaluation methods are preconditioned by extra flight or reference data. Thus, a method, which is able to largely conquer the premises of classical quality assessment methods and can be used in single survey line, has been developed in this paper. According to theoretical analysis, the method chooses the stability of two horizontal attitude angles, horizontal specific force and vertical specific force as the determinants of quality assessment method. The actual data, collected by SGA-WZ02 from 13 flights 21 lines in certain survey, was used to build the model and elaborate the method. To substantiate the performance of the quality assessment model, the model is applied in extra repeat line flights from two surveys. Compared with internal RMSE, standard deviation of assessment residuals are 0.23 mGal and 0.16 mGal in two surveys, which shows that the quality assessment method is reliable and stricter. The extra flights are not necessary by specially arranging the route of flights. The method, summarized from SGA-WZ02, is a feasible approach to assess gravimetry quality using single line data and is also suitable for other strapdown gravimeters.

Compensation of Horizontal Gravity Disturbances for High Precision Inertial Navigation

Horizontal gravity disturbances are an important factor that affects the accuracy of inertial navigation systems in long-duration ship navigation. In this paper, from the perspective of the coordinate system and vector calculation, the effects of horizontal gravity disturbance on the initial alignment and navigation calculation are simultaneously analyzed. Horizontal gravity disturbances cause the navigation coordinate frame built in initial alignment to not be consistent with the navigation coordinate frame in which the navigation calculation is implemented. The mismatching of coordinate frame violates the vector calculation law, which will have an adverse effect on the precision of the inertial navigation system. To address this issue, two compensation methods suitable for two different navigation coordinate frames are proposed, one of the methods implements the compensation in velocity calculation, and the other does the compensation in attitude calculation. Finally, simulations and ship navigation experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

A Model of Gravity Vector Measurement Noise for Estimating Accelerometer Bias in Gravity Disturbance Compensation

Compensation of gravity disturbance can improve the precision of inertial navigation, but the effect of compensation will decrease due to the accelerometer bias, and estimation of the accelerometer bias is a crucial issue in gravity disturbance compensation. This paper first investigates the effect of accelerometer bias on gravity disturbance compensation, and the situation in which the accelerometer bias should be estimated is established. The accelerometer bias is estimated from the gravity vector measurement, and a model of measurement noise in gravity vector measurement is built. Based on this model, accelerometer bias is separated from the gravity vector measurement error by the method of least squares. Horizontal gravity disturbances are calculated through EGM2008 spherical harmonic model to build the simulation scene, and the simulation results indicate that precise estimations of the accelerometer bias can be obtained with the proposed method.

Experimental Investigations on Airborne Gravimetry Based on Compressed Sensing

Gravity surveys are an important research topic in geophysics and geodynamics. This paper investigates a method for high accuracy large scale gravity anomaly data reconstruction. Based on the airborne gravimetry technology, a flight test was carried out in China with the strap-down airborne gravimeter (SGA-WZ) developed by the Laboratory of Inertial Technology of the National University of Defense Technology. Taking into account the sparsity of airborne gravimetry by the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), this paper proposes a method for gravity anomaly data reconstruction using the theory of compressed sensing (CS). The gravity anomaly data reconstruction is an ill-posed inverse problem, which can be transformed into a sparse optimization problem. This paper uses the zero-norm as the objective function and presents a greedy algorithm called Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) to solve the corresponding minimization problem. The test results have revealed that the compressed sampling rate is approximately 14%, the standard deviation of the reconstruction error by OMP is 0.03 mGal and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 56.48 dB. In contrast, the standard deviation of the reconstruction error by the existing nearest-interpolation method (NIPM) is 0.15 mGal and the SNR is 42.29 dB. These results have shown that the OMP algorithm can reconstruct the gravity anomaly data with higher accuracy and fewer measurements.