Real-Time Baseline Error Estimation and Correction for GNSS/Strong Motion Seismometer Integration

Accurate and rapid estimation of permanent surface displacement is required immediately after a slip event for earthquake monitoring or tsunami early warning. It is difficult to achieve the necessary accuracy and precision at high- and low-frequencies using GNSS or seismometry alone. GNSS and seismic sensors can be integrated to overcome the limitations of each. Kalman filter algorithms with displacement and velocity states have been developed to combine GNSS and accelerometer observations to obtain the optimal displacement solutions. However, the sawtooth-like phenomena caused by the bias or tilting of the sensor decrease the accuracy of the displacement estimates. A three-dimensional Kalman filter algorithm with an additional baseline error state has been developed. An experiment with both a GNSS receiver and a strong motion seismometer mounted on a movable platform and subjected to known displacements was carried out. The results clearly show that the additional baseline error state enables the Kalman filter to estimate the instrument's sensor bias and tilt effects and correct the state estimates in real time. Furthermore, the proposed Kalman filter algorithm has been validated with data sets from the 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah Earthquake. The results indicate that the additional baseline error state can not only eliminate the linear and quadratic drifts but also reduce the sawtooth-like effects from the displacement solutions. The conventional zero-mean baseline-corrected results cannot show the permanent displacements after an earthquake; the two-state Kalman filter can only provide stable and optimal solutions if the strong motion seismometer had not been moved or tilted by the earthquake. Yet the proposed Kalman filter can achieve the precise and accurate displacements by estimating and correcting for the baseline error at each epoch. The integration filters out noise-like distortions and thus improves the real-time detection and measurement capability. The system will return precise and accurate displacements at a high rate for real-time earthquake monitoring.