Measurement-based perturbation theory and differential equation parameter estimation with applications to satellite gravimetry

Abstract

The numerical integration method has been routinely used to produce global standard gravitational models from satellite tracking measurements of CHAMP/GRACE types. It is implemented by solving the differential equations of the partial derivatives of a satellite orbit with respect to the unknown harmonic coefficients under the conditions of zero initial values. From the mathematical point of view, satellite gravimetry from satellite tracking is the problem of estimating unknown parameters in the Newton's nonlinear differential equations from satellite tracking measurements. We prove that zero initial values for the partial derivatives are incorrect mathematically and not permitted physically. The numerical integration method, as currently implemented and used in satellite gravimetry and statistics, is groundless. We use three different methods to derive new local solutions to the Newton's nonlinear governing differential equations of motion with a nominal reference orbit. Bearing in mind that satellite orbits can now be tracked almost continuously at unprecedented high accuracy, we propose the measurement-based perturbation theory and derive global uniformly convergent solutions to the Newton's nonlinear governing differential equations of motion. Since the solutions are global uniformly convergent, they are able to extract smallest possible gravitational signals from modern and future satellite tracking measurements for global high-precision, high-resolution gravitational models. By directly turning the nonlinear differential equations of satellite motion into the nonlinear integral equations, we reformulate the links between satellite tracking measurements and the global uniformly convergent solutions to the Newton's governing differential equations as a condition adjustment model with equality constraints.