New results from strapdown airborne gravimetry using temperature stabilisation

In recent years, the use of a strapdown Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for airborne gravimetry has proven itself to be an accurate and resilient measurement system, improving the operational flexibility. The main concern is erroneous long-wavelength information in the resulting estimates, which is suspected to originate from uncompensated long-term drift of the accelerometers, probably originating from temperature variation. For this reason, iMAR navigation has designed a temperature stabilisation box, which allows for temperature stabilisation of their IMU systems. On a regional airborne gravity survey over the Kattegat Sea between Denmark and Sweden, such a temperature stabilised strapdown IMU was operated alongside a traditional spring-type platform-stabilised gravity system from ZLS. An analysis of the difference in gravity estimates at cross-over locations yielded a mean value of 0.3 mGal for the iMAR system with an indicated accuracy of 1.0 mGal. The temperature stabilisation unit therefore effectively limits the accelerometer drift and improves the long-wavelength information. However, a straightforward merging approach, adjusting the line-based mean values of the iMAR estimates to match that of the ZLS estimates, improved the accuracy to 0.8 mGal. This indicates that the long-wavelength information of the stabilised-platform system is still superior to that of the strapdown system.