Accuracy assessment of the upward continuation using the gravity model from ultra-High degree spherical harmonics

The accuracy of the upward continuation is assessed through the gravity modeling using an ultra-high degree spherical harmonic expansion. The difficulties in the numerical calculation of Legendre function with ultra-high degree, underflow and/or overflow, is successfully resolved in 128 bit calculation scheme. Using the generated Legendre function, the gravity anomaly with spatial resolution of 1 ' x 1 ' on the geoid is calculated. The generated gravity anomaly is degraded and extracted with various noise levels and data intervals, then upward continuation is applied to each data sets. The comparison between the upward continued gravity disturbances and the directly calculated from the spherical harmonics showed that the accuracy on the direct method was significantly better than that of Poisson method. In addition, it is verified that the denser and less noised gravity data on the geoid generates better gravity disturbance vectors at an altitude. Especially, it is found that the gravity noise level less than 5mGal, and the data interval less than 2arcmin is necessary for next generation precision INS navigation which requires the accuracy of 5mGal or better at an altitude.