AAS 97-130

ON THE APPLICATION OF GRAVITY GRADIOMETER FOR INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM

H. Shingu, National Aerospace Laboratory, Japan

Abstract

Availability of a new-type of strapdown inertial navigation system using gravity gradiometer is discussed. Analytical solutions of gravity gradients are derived as second order spatial gradients of the gravitational potential in a conservative field. Next, the process of obtaining the gravitation accelerations from the measured data of gravity gradients is analytically shown. Also, a method for calculating the influence of a gravity variation to the trajectory of the vehicle is shown. The performance of the gravity gradiometer using current techniques is demonstrated based on the quantitative evaluation of the navigation errors owing to the gravity variation.