GENA for airborne gravimetry
GeoNumerics' generic network adjustment software platform GENA will be used in the "GAL: Galileo for Gravity" project for the measurement of the gravity field with inertial measurement units (IMUs) and GPS/Galileo receivers on board of aircraft; a technique known as "kinematic airborne GNSS/INS gravimetry."
In the GAL project, GeoNumerics contributes an extended capability of its GENA platform in order to handle millions of unknowns. This capability is a keystone in the implementation of the dynamic network approach (Colomina and Blázquez 2004) for the solution of large systems of differential and non-differential observation equations with applications to aerial, terrestrial and marine mobile mapping.
Researchers of the GAL consortium will develop a specific GENA model toolbox for airborne gravimetry. The model toolbox will implement the mathematical models to derive gravity perturbations from inertial observations (linear accelerations and angular rates) and GPS/Galileo carrier phase observations. GAL researchers will further integrate the GNSS/INS gravity perturbations with global gravity field data from ESA's Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite mission. The ultimate goal of GAL is to estimate gravity field anomalies with errors bounds of few mgal (1 gal = 1 cm / s^2) at wavelengths of 1 km and longer.
GAL is a European Union research project managed by the European GNSS Agency (GSA) and funded by the European Commission (grant 287193) as part of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP7). GAL belongs to the FP7-GALILEO-2011-GSA-1-a call and to the Work Programme Topic GALILEO.2011.1.3.1 "Use of Galileo and EGNOS for Scientific Applications and innovative applications in new domains" (http://www.gal-project.eu/).
The GAL consortium is lead by the company Galileian Plus (Rome, IT) and composed of DEIMOS Engenharia (Lisabon, PT), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Lausanne, CH), the Institut Geològic de Catalunya (Barcelona, ES), the Institute of Geomatics (Castelldefels, ES) and the Politecnico di Milano (Milano, IT).
Galileian Plus S.r.l. (Rome, Italy) is a SME controlled by the Geospatial Knowledge Holding (GKH), an Italian industrial group that has been working since 1990 in the field of geospatial knowledge and technologies. (http://www.galileianplus.it)
Galileo is the European Union (EU) satellite-based positioning, navigation and timing system and, as such, the EU contribution to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) of systems together with the US GPS, the Russian GLONASS and the Chinese Beidou. It will consist of 30 satellites positioned in three circular Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) planes at 23222 km altitude above the Earth. Its Final Operational Capability (FOC) configuration of 30 satellites is scheduled, as of today, for 2020.
The concept of dynamic networks was invented by researchers I. Colomina and M. Blázquez (Institute of Geomatics) and published by the first time in:
Colomina,I., Blázquez,M., 2004. A unified approach to static and dynamic modelling in photogrammetry and remote sensing. International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. 35 (Part B1), pp. 178-183.