GOCE long-wavelength gravity field recovery from 1s-sampled kinematic orbits using the acceleration approach

authored by: T. Reubelt, O. Baur, M. Weigelt, M. Roth, N. Sneeuw
Abstract: The acceleration approach is an efficient and accurate tool for the estimation of the lowfrequency part of GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) gravity fields from GPS-based satellite-to-satellite tracking (SST). This approach is characterized by second-order numerical differentiation of the kinematic orbit. However, the application to GOCE-SST data, given with a 1s-sampling, showed that serious problems arise due to strong amplification of high frequency noise. In order to mitigate this problem, we developed a tailored processing strategy in a recent paper which makes use of an extended differentiation scheme acting as low-pass filter, and empirical covariance functions to account for the different precision of the components and the inter-epoch correlations caused by orbit computation and numerical differentiation. However, also a more “bruteforce” strategy can be applied using the standard unextended differentiation scheme and data-weighting by error propagation of the provided orbit variance-covariance matrices (VCMs). It is shown that the direct differentiator shows a better approximation and the exploitedmethod benefits from the stochastic information contained in the VCMs compared to the former strategy. A strong dependence on the maximum resolution, the arc-length and the method for data-weighting is observed, which requires careful selection of these parameters. By comparison with alternative GOCE hl-SST solutions we conclude that the acceleration approach is a competitive method for gravity field recovery from kinematic orbit information.
External Organisation(s): University of Stuttgart
Austrian Academy of Sciences
University of Luxembourg
Type: Conference contribution
Pages: 21-26
No. of pages: 6
Publication date: 2014
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Computers in Earth Sciences, Geophysics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10837-7_3 (Access: Unknown)
: Details in the research portal "Research@Leibniz University"

BibTeX

@inproceedings{44fd4f8c74914366adcdd69b3cfb7d0a,
title = "GOCE long-wavelength gravity field recovery from 1s-sampled kinematic orbits using the acceleration approach",
abstract = "The acceleration approach is an efficient and accurate tool for the estimation of the lowfrequency part of GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) gravity fields from GPS-based satellite-to-satellite tracking (SST). This approach is characterized by second-order numerical differentiation of the kinematic orbit. However, the application to GOCE-SST data, given with a 1s-sampling, showed that serious problems arise due to strong amplification of high frequency noise. In order to mitigate this problem, we developed a tailored processing strategy in a recent paper which makes use of an extended differentiation scheme acting as low-pass filter, and empirical covariance functions to account for the different precision of the components and the inter-epoch correlations caused by orbit computation and numerical differentiation. However, also a more “bruteforce” strategy can be applied using the standard unextended differentiation scheme and data-weighting by error propagation of the provided orbit variance-covariance matrices (VCMs). It is shown that the direct differentiator shows a better approximation and the exploitedmethod benefits from the stochastic information contained in the VCMs compared to the former strategy. A strong dependence on the maximum resolution, the arc-length and the method for data-weighting is observed, which requires careful selection of these parameters. By comparison with alternative GOCE hl-SST solutions we conclude that the acceleration approach is a competitive method for gravity field recovery from kinematic orbit information.",
keywords = "Data weighting, GOCE, Gravity field, Kinematic orbits, Orbit variances, Satellite-to-satellite tracking",
author = "T. Reubelt and O. Baur and M. Weigelt and M. Roth and N. Sneeuw",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.; International Association of Geodesy Symposium on Gravity, Geoid and Height Systems, GGHS 2012 ; Conference date: 09-10-2012 Through 12-10-2012",
year = "2014",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-319-10837-7_3",
language = "English",
series = "International Association of Geodesy Symposia",
publisher = "Springer Verlag",
pages = "21--26",
editor = "Urs Marti and Pascal Willis and Chris Rizos",
booktitle = "Gravity, Geoid and Height Systems - IAG Symposium GGHS2012, Proceedings",
address = "Germany",
}