3:30 PM - 4:30 PM
[G02-P-07] Application of Local Functions in Airborne Gravimetry for Regional Geoid Improvement
Local functions such as the Radial Basis Functions (RBF) have been extensively studied and applied in physical geodesy in the recent decade, such as in Schmidt et al (2007) and Klees et al (2008), and in many other studies that focused mainly on satellite mission related applications. Considering that airborne gravity data is usually limited in both the space domain and the frequency domain, it is a perfect match to the characteristics of the RBF. Thus, it is a natural choice to process and model the airborne gravity data with RBF, though in the literature for airborne gravimetry various other methods such as Least Squares Collocation and the inverse of Abel-Poisson's integral (the Fredholm integral equation of the first kind) are often used to take advantage of the airborne data for local geoid improvement. In this study, first, a series of simulation tests are carried out to demonstrate the reliability and versatility of using RBF to model and to downward continue the airborne data, as well as to detect outliers and systematic bias in problematic flight lines typically find in an airborne campaign. Then the final verified (in term of closed loop simulation tests) algorithm is applied to the real airborne flight data in the area of Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands for local gravity field modeling.