Modeling and analysis of Earth’s gravity field measurement performance by inner-formation flying system Original Research Article

The Earth’s gravity field can be measured with high precision by constructing the purely gravitational orbit of the inner-satellite in Inner-formation Flying System (IFS), which is independently proposed by Chinese scholars and offers a new way to carry out gravity field measurement by satellite without accelerometers. In IFS, for the purpose of quickly evaluating the highest degree of recovered gravity field model and geoid error as well as analyzing the influence of system parameters on gravity field measurement, an analytical formula was established by spectral analysis method. The formula can reflect the analytical relationship between gravity field measurement performance and system parameters such as orbit altitude, the inner-satellite orbit determination error, the inner-satellite residual disturbances, data sampling interval and total measurement time. This analytical formula was then corrected by four factors introduced from numerical simulation of IFS gravity field measurement. By comparing computation results from corrected analytical formula and the actual gravity field measurement performance by CHAMP, the correctness and rationality of this analytical formula were verified. Based on this analytical formula, the influences of system parameters on IFS gravity field measurement were analyzed. It is known that gravity field measurement performance is a monotone decreasing function of orbit altitude, the inner-satellite orbit determination error, the inner-satellite residual disturbances, data sampling interval and the reciprocal of total measurement time. There is a match relationship between the inner-satellite orbit determination error and residual disturbances, in other words, the change rate of gravity field measurement performance with one of them is seriously restricted by their relative size. The analytical formula can be used to quantitatively evaluate gravity field measurement performance fast and design IFS parameters optimally. It is noted that the analytical formula and corresponding conclusions are applied to any gravity satellite which measures gravity field by satellite perturbation orbit.