Significant research has been conducted in recent decades on developing a practical all-accelerometer inertial navigation system and on developing a practical moving-base gravity gradiometer. The former strives to measure kinematic motion in the presence of unwanted variations in gravity; the latter endeavors to measure variations in gravity in the presence of unwanted motion. Thus, goes the adage, one person's signal is another person's noise. In this paper, a mathematical relationship is derived that links the two concepts together. It is demonstrated that a complete solution to real-time navigation and gravity gradient determination can be performed simultaneously and unambiguously using all-accelerometer inertial measurements only. Although the separation of gravity from kinematic motion appears to violate Einstein's principle of equivalence, this is not the case. Nonetheless, accelerometer technology is not yet of sufficient maturity to allow a practical implementation of this concept, but advances certainly are being made that could result in a practical implementation perhaps within a decade.
A merging of system technologies: all-accelerometer inertial navigation and gravity gradiometry
2002-01-01
653538 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
GPS Denied Inertial Navigation Using Gravity Gradiometry
AIAA | 2007
|Use of Gravity Gradiometry in Precision Inertial Navigation Systems
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2011
|GPS Denied Inertial Navigation Using Gravity Gradiometry AIAA Paper
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2007
|Passive Airborne Navigation and Terrain Avoidance Using Gravity Gradiometry
Online Contents | 1995
|