Noise filtering of full-gravity gradient tensor data

In oil and mineral exploration, gravity gradient tensor data include higher- frequency signals than gravity data, which can be used to delineate small-scale anomalies. However, full-tensor gradiometry （FTG） data are contaminated by high-frequency random noise. The separation of noise from high-frequency signals is one of the most challenging tasks in processing of gravity gradient tensor data. We first derive the Cartesian equations of gravity gradient tensors under the constraint of the Laplace equation and the expression for the gravitational potential, and then we use the Cartesian equations to fit the measured gradient tensor data by using optimal linear inversion and remove the noise from the measured data. Based on model tests, we confirm that not only this method removes the high- frequency random noise but also enhances the weak anomaly signals masked by the noise. Compared with traditional low-pass filtering methods, this method avoids removing noise by sacrificing resolution. Finally, we apply our method to real gravity gradient tensor data acquired by Bell Geospace for the Vinton Dome at the Texas-Louisiana border.

Fast 3D forward modeling of the magnetic field and gradient tensor on an undulated surface

Magnetic field gradient tensor technique provides abundant data for delicate inversion of subsurface magnetic susceptibility distribution. Large scale magnetic data inversion imaging requires high speed and accuracy for forward modeling. For arbitrarily distributed susceptibility data on an undulated surface, we propose a fast 3D forward modeling method in the wavenumber domain based on(1) the wavenumber-domain expression of the prism combination model and the Gauss–FFT algorithm and(2) cubic spline interpolation. We apply the proposed 3D forward modeling method to synthetic data and use weighting coefficients in the wavenumber domain to improve the modeling for multiple observation surfaces, and also demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

Full gravity gradient tensors from vertical gravity by cosine transform

We present a method to calculate the full gravity gradient tensors from pre-existing vertical gravity data using the cosine transform technique and discuss the calculated tensor accuracy when the gravity anomalies are contaminated by noise. Gravity gradient tensors computation on 2D infinite horizontal cylinder and 3D ＂Y＂ type dyke models show that the results computed with the DCT technique are more accurate than the FFT technique regardless if the gravity anomalies are contaminated by noise or not. The DCT precision has increased 2 to 3 times from the standard deviation. In application, the gravity gradient tensors of the Hulin basin calculated by DCT and FFT show that the two results are consistent with each other. However, the DCT results are smoother than results computed with FFT. This shows that the proposed method is less affected by noise and can better reflect the fault distribution.

3D density inversion of gravity gradient data using the extrapolated Tikhonov regularization

We use the extrapolated Tikhonov regularization to deal with the ill-posed problem of 3D density inversion of gravity gradient data. The use of regularization parameters in the proposed method reduces the deviations between calculated and observed data. We also use the depth weighting function based on the eigenvector of gravity gradient tensor to eliminate undesired effects owing to the fast attenuation of the position function. Model data suggest that the extrapolated Tikhonov regularization in conjunction with the depth weighting function can effectively recover the 3D distribution of density anomalies. We conduct density inversion of gravity gradient data from the Australia Kauring test site and compare the inversion results with the published research results. The proposed inversion method can be used to obtain the 3D density distribution of underground anomalies.

Edge enhancement of gravity anomalies and gravity gradient tensors using an improved small sub-domain filtering method

In order to enhance geological body boundary visual effects in images and improve interpretation accuracy using gravity and magnetic field data, we propose an improved small sub-domain filtering method to enhance gravity anomalies and gravity gradient tensors. We discuss the effect of Gaussian white noise on the improved small sub-domain filtering method, as well as analyze the effect of window size on geological body edge recognition at different extension directions. Model experiments show that the improved small sub-domain filtering method is less affected by noise, filter window size, and geological body edge direction so it can more accurately depict geological body edges than the conventional small sub-domain filtering method. It also shows that deeply buried body edges can be well delineated through increasing the filter window size. In application, the enhanced gravity anomalies and calculated gravity gradient tensors of the Hulin basin show that the improved small sub-domain filtering can recognize more horizontal fault locations than the conventional method.

A contrastive study on the influences of radial and three-dimensional satellite gravity gradiometry on the accuracy of the Earth's gravitational field recovery

The accuracy of the Earth＇s gravitational field measured from the gravity field and steady-state ocean circulation explorer（GOCE）,up to 250 degrees,influenced by the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij from the satellite gravity gradiometry（SGG） are contrastively demonstrated based on the analytical error model and numerical simulation,respectively.Firstly,the new analytical error model of the cumulative geoid height,influenced by the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij are established,respectively.In 250 degrees,the GOCE cumulative geoid height error measured by the radial gravity gradient V zz is about 2 1/2 times higher than that measured by the three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij.Secondly,the Earth＇s gravitational field from GOCE completely up to 250 degrees is recovered using the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij by numerical simulation,respectively.The study results show that when the measurement error of the gravity gradient is 3×10 12 /s 2,the cumulative geoid height errors using the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij are 12.319 cm and 9.295 cm at 250 degrees,respectively.The accuracy of the cumulative geoid height using the three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij is improved by 30%-40% on average compared with that using the radial gravity gradient V zz in 250 degrees.Finally,by mutual verification of the analytical error model and numerical simulation,the orders of magnitude from the accuracies of the Earth＇s gravitational field recovery make no substantial differences based on the radial and three-dimensional gravity gradients,respectively.Therefore,it is feasible to develop in advance a radial cold-atom interferometric gradiometer with a measurement accuracy of 10 13 /s 2-10 15 /s 2 for precisely producing the next-generation GOCE Follow-On Earth gravity field model with a high spatial resolution.

Analysis of limitations on recovery of gravity field based on satellite gravity gradient data

Although satellite gravity gradient data plays a great role in determining short-wavelength part of static gravity field model,accuracy of the long-wavelength part of gravity field model recovered by them are poor,which leads to only a few applications in time-variable gravity investigation.The reason is that some factors limit the accuracy of the gravity field recovered using gradient data,including accuracy of the gravity gradient observations,measurement bandwidth(MBW)of gradiometer,satellite inclination,etc.This paper aims at analyzing the influence of these limitations on gravity field recovery and discusses the possibility of time-variable gravity field detection by using gravity gradient observations.Firstly,for arbitrary satellite orbit inclination,we give the frequency distributions of all the components of gravity gradients(i.e.Txx;Tyy;Tzz;Txy;Txz and Tyz,).The results show that the maximum frequency of each component of the gravity gradients is the same,i.e.l=Ts(l is degree of the gravity field model,Ts is the orbital periods),and it is not influenced by the inclination of the satellite orbits.Secondly,the paper gives a theory proof to explain why only the low orders of the coefficients are influenced by polar gaps.Big polar gaps are experimented by a numerical test with inclination of 45°.Finally,considering that the measurement bandwidth can be expanded and accuracy of gradient observations can be improved by superconducting gravity gradiometer(SGG)compared to gradiometer used in Gravity field and steadystate Ocean Circulation Explorer(GOCE),the possibility of detecting time-variable gravity using gravity gradient observations is discussed.The results show that the SGG creates errors in MBW with magnitude of 0.014 m E,which is smaller than the magnitude of the time-variable gravity gradient signals(i.e.,0.02 m E)derived from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment(GRACE)gravity field models.This indicates the potential of SGG in time-variable gravity detection.

Construction of nonsingular formulae of variance and covariance function of disturbing gravity gradient tensors

When the computational point is approaching the poles, the variance and covariance formulae of the disturbing gravity gradient tensors tend to be infinite, and this is a singular problem. In order to solve the problem, the authors deduced the practical non-singular computational formulae of the first- and second-order derivatives of the Legendre functions and two kinds of spherical harmonic functions, and then constructed the nonsingular formulae of variance and eovarianee function of disturbing gravity gradient tensors.

Forward Modeling of Gravity,Gravity Gradients,and Magnetic Anomalies due to Complex Bodies

On the basis of the results of improved analytical expression of computation of gravity anomalies due to a homogeneous polyhedral body composed of polygonal facets, and applying the forward theory with the coordinate transformation of vectors and tensors, we deduced both the analytical expressions for gravity gradient tensors and for magnetic anomalies of a polygon, and obtained new analytical expressions for computing vertical gradients of gravity anomalies and vertical component of magnetic anomalies caused by a polyhedral body. And also we developed explicitly the complete unified expressions for the calculation of gravity anomalies, gravity gradient, and magnetic anomalies due to the homogeneous polyhedron. Furthermore, we deduced new analytical expressions for computing vertical gradients of gravity anomalies due to a finite rectangular prism by applying the newly obtained expressions for gravity gradient tensors due to a polyhedral target body. Comparison with forward calculation of models shows the correctness of these new expressions. It will reduce forward calculation time of gravity-magnetic anomalies and improve computational efficiency by applying our unified expressions for joint forward modeling of gravity-magnetic anomalies due to homogeneous polyhedral bodies.

Improved preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm and application in 3D inversion of gravity-gradiometry data

With the continuous development of full tensor gradiometer （FTG） measurement techniques, three-dimensional （3D） inversion of FTG data is becoming increasingly used in oil and gas exploration. In the fast processing and interpretation of large-scale high-precision data, the use of the graphics processing unit process unit （GPU） and preconditioning methods are very important in the data inversion. In this paper, an improved preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm is proposed by combining the symmetric successive over-relaxation （SSOR） technique and the incomplete Choleksy decomposition conjugate gradient algorithm （ICCG）. Since preparing the preconditioner requires extra time, a parallel implement based on GPU is proposed. The improved method is then applied in the inversion of noise- contaminated synthetic data to prove its adaptability in the inversion of 3D FTG data. Results show that the parallel SSOR-ICCG algorithm based on NVIDIA Tesla C2050 GPU achieves a speedup of approximately 25 times that of a serial program using a 2.0 GHz Central Processing Unit （CPU）. Real airbome gravity-gradiometry data from Vinton salt dome （south- west Louisiana, USA） are also considered. Good results are obtained, which verifies the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed parallel method in fast inversion of 3D FTG data.

Joint inversion of gravity and multiple components of tensor gravity data

Geological structures often exhibit smooth characteristics away from sharp discontinuities. One aim of geophysical inversion is to recover information about the smooth structures as well as about the sharp discontinuities. Because no specific operator can provide a perfect sparse representation of complicated geological models, hyper-parameter regularization inversion based on the iterative split Bregman method was used to recover the features of both smooth and sharp geological structures. A novel preconditioned matrix was proposed, which counteracted the natural decay of the sensitivity matrix and its inverse matrix was calculated easily. Application of the algorithm to synthetic data produces density models that are good representations of the designed models. The results show that the algorithm proposed is feasible and effective.

A GOCE only gravity model GOSG01S and the validation of GOCE related satellite gravity models

We compile the GOCE-only satellite model GOSG01S complete to spherical harmonic degree of 220 using Satellite Gravity Gradiometry （SGG） data and the Satellite-to-Satellite Tracking （SST） observations along the GOCE orbit based on applying a least-squares analysis. The diagonal components （Vxx, Vyy, Vzz） of the gravitational gradient tensor are used to form the system of observation equations with the band-pass ARMA filter. The point-wise acceleration observations （ax, ay, az） along the orbit are used to form the system of observation equations up to the maximum spherical harmonic degree/order 130. The analysis of spectral accuracy characteristics of the newly derived gravitational model GOSG01S and the existing models GOTIM04S, GODIR04S, GOSPW04S and JYY_GOCE02S based on their comparison with the ultrahigh degree model EIGEN-6C2 reveals a significant consistency at the spectral window approximately between 80 and 190 due to the same period SGG data used to compile these models. The GOCE related satellite gravity models GOSG01S, GOTIM05S, GODIR05S, GOTIM04S, GODIR04S, GOSPW04S, JYY_- GOCE02S, EIGEN-6C2 and EGM2008 are also validated by using GPS-leveling data in China and USA. According to the truncation at degree 200, the statistic results show that all GGMs have very similar differences at GPS-leveling points in USA, and all GOCE related gravity models have better performance than EGM2008 in China. This suggests that all these models provide much more information on the gravity field than EGM2008 in areas with low terrestrial gravity coverage. And STDs of height anomaly differences in China for the selected truncation degrees show that GOCE has improved the accuracy of the global models beyond degree 90 and the accuracies of the models improve from 24 cm to 16 cm. STDs of geoid height differences in USA show that GOSG01S model has best consistency comparing with GPSleveling data for the frequency band of the degree between 20 and 160.

A fast-imaging method for airborne gravity gradient data based on tensor invariants

Airborne gravity gradient data contain additional short-wavelength information about the buried geological bodies.This study develops a fast interpretation method based on the gravity gradient data for the sources’spatial location and physical property parameters.This study analyzes the advantages of the source parameter inversion method based on tensor invariants.It proposes a normalized fast-imaging method based on tensor invariants to quickly estimate the spatial location parameters of sources through the local maximum value position of the imaging results.First,the tensor invariant characteristics and the imaging method’s effect in a simple model are analyzed using a theoretical model.Second,to analyze the imaging method’s application effect in complex model conditions,the method’s applicability is quantitatively analyzed using the data added with noise,superimposed anomalies of adjacent sources,and anomalies of deep and shallow geological bodies.The theoretical model’s simulation results show that the model’s imaging results in this study have satisfactory performance on the spatial position estimation of the sources.Finally,the method is applied to the gravity anomaly data corresponding to the Humble salt dome.The imaging results can effectively estimate the distribution of the salt dome’s horizontal and depths,verifying the practicability of the method.

Multi-component joint inversion of gravity gradient based on fast forward calculation

With the development of gravity gradient full tensor measurement technique,three-dimensional( 3D) inversion based on gravity gradient tensor can provide more accurate information. But the forward calculation of 3D full tensor sensitivity matrix is very time-consuming,which restricts its development and application.According to the symmetry of the kernel function,the authors reconstruct the underground source of geological body to avoid repeat computation of the same value,and work out the corresponding relationship between the response of geological body to the observation point and the response of reconstructed geological body to the observation point. According to the relationship,rapid calculation of full tensor gravity sensitivity matrix can be achieved. The model calculation shows that this method can increase the speed of 30-45 times compared with the traditional calculation method. The sensitivity matrix is applied to the multi-component inversion of gravity gradient. The application of this method on the measured data provides the basis for the promotion of the method.

An iterative Wiener filtering method based on the gravity gradient invariants

How to deal with colored noises of GOCE （Gravity field and steady - state Ocean Circulation Explorer） satellite has been the key to data processing. This paper focused on colored noises of GOCE gradient data and the frequency spectrum analysis. According to the analysis results, gravity field model of the optima] degrees 90-240 is given, which is recovered by COCE gradient data. This paper presents an iterative Wiener filtering method based on the gravity gradient invariants. By this method a degree-220 model was calculated from GOCE SGG （Satellite Gravity Gradient） data. The degrees above 90 of ITG2010 were taken as the prior gravity field model, replacing the low degree gravity field model calculated by GOCE orbit data. GOCE gradient colored noises was processed by Wiener filtering. Finally by Wiener filtering iterative calculation, the gravity field model was restored by space-wise harmonic analysis method. The results show that the model＇s accuracy matched well with the ESA＇s （European Space Agency） results by using the same data,

Recovery of the gravity field from GOCE data by using the invariants of gradient tensor

The gravity field models GUCAS_EGM and GUCAS_EGM_DL are established from GOCE data (GOCE Level 2 Products from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, 2009) based on the method of the invariants of the gravity gradient tensor, where GUCAS_EGM is derived after GOCE gravity gradient data are filtered with FIR, and GUCAS_EGM_DL is computed with an additional Durbin-Levison arithmetic apart from FIR. Since this method, different from current programs dealing with GOCE data, is introduced for the first time, some new problems are required to be discussed in advance; for example, how to filter GOCE gravity gradient data, how to compute the invariants of the gradient tensor, and how to deal with the pole gap and so on. In addition, by comparing our models with ones recommended by ESA, it can be seen that the variations of GUCAS_EGM and the models recommended by ESA to EGM08 are almost equivalent, and the variation of GUCAS_EGM_DL to EGM08 is obviously less than ones of the recommended models.

Gravity and gravity gradient changes caused by a point dislocation

In this paper we studied gravitational potential, gravity and its gradient changes, which are caused by a pointdislocation, and gave the concise mathematical deduction with definite physical implication in dealing with thesingular integral at a seismic source. We also analysed the features of the fields of gravity and gravity gradient,gravity-vertical-displacement gradient. The conclusions a re: (1) Gravity and gravit y gradient changes are verysmall with the change of vertical positionl (2) Gravity change is much greater than the gravity gradient changewhich is not so distinct; (3) The gravity change due to redistribution of mass accounts for 10-50 percent of thetotal gravity change caused by dislocation. The signs (positive or negative) of total gravity change and verticaldisplacement are opposite each other at the same point for strike slip and dip slip 1 (4) Gravity-vertical displacement-gradient is not constantl it manifests a variety of patterns for different dislocation modelsl (5) Gravityvertical-displacement-gradient is approximately equal to a pparent gra vit y-- vert ical- displacement -gradient.

The average acceleration approach applied to gravity coefficients recovery based on GOCE orbits

The average acceleration approach was applied to recover a gravity field model Model;CA from GOCE precise science orbits from September 2 to November 2, 2010, and furthermore a so called sequential least square adjustment was used. The model was compared with other gravity field models based on CHAMP, GRACE and GOCE. The result shows that the model is superior to gravity field based on CHAMP, and with higher accuracy than other international gravity field models based on only GOCE data before 80 degree. The degree geoid height of Model;CA reaches 3cm up to 90 degree and order.

Lunar deflections of the vertical and their distribution

The deflection of the vertical reflects the mass distribution and density anomaly of celestial bodies. Lunar deflections of the vertical include directional information of the Moon’s gravity field. SGM90d, recovered from SELENE mission, revealed the lunar far side gravity field for the first time in history owes to 4-way Doppler data. Lunar deflections of the vertical and their meridional and prime vertical components are calculated from SGM90d, and then their global distributions are also given in the paper. The gradients of lunar deflections of the vertical are defined and computed as well. The correlations between the lunar deflections of the vertical and the lunar terrain have been fully discussed. Many different characteristics of lunar deflections of vertical have been found between the near side and the far side of the Moon, which may be caused from the lithospheric compensation and the uplifting of mantle.