Acceleration determination for airborne gravimetry with the use of kinematic global positioning system

Airborne gravity has attracted much interest in recent years as a method of performing rapid and economical gravity surveys for geophysical applications. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been recognized as the best way of measuring the vertical acceleration required for an airborne system. This thesis focuses on the development and implementation of an acceleration determination model, which can provide accurate accelerations by the use of the second time derivative of the GPS phase solution and the first time derivative of the GPS Doppler solution.;This thesis assesses the GPS performance for airborne gravimetry using the results of an airborne GPS test conducted in the province of Ontario, Canada. The airborne GPS experiment comprised four Ashtech MD-XII GPS receivers, in which three GPS receivers were fixed on ground as monitor stations and another GPS receiver was on board called mobile station. A low pass filter technique was applied to the raw acceleration data as to filter out the high frequency receiver measurement noise from the low frequency acceleration data. It is shown the accuracy of the GPS determined acceleration is sufficient for the needs of airborne gravity survey.