THE USE OF DEGREE VARIANCES IN SATELLITE GRADIOMETRY

The applicability of degree-variance propagation for error analysis an d for the validation of other error prediction methods is investigated for the case of satellite gradiometry. For several idealized mission scenarios exact expressions for the a posteriori variances exist; for certain other scenarios approximate relations exist. As degree varianc es cannot be directly applied to a non-polar orbit, a rule of thumb to predict which coefficients will be affected by the polar gap is deriv ed.