remote sensing Article Determination of the Regularization Parameter to Combine Heterogeneous Observations in Regional Gravity Field Modeling Qing Liu 1,* , Michael Schmidt 1, Roland Pail 2 and Martin Willberg 2 1 Deutsches Geodätisches Forschungsinstitut der Technischen Universität München (DGFI-TUM), Arcisstr. 21, 80333 Munich, Germany;
[email protected] 2 Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy, Technical University of Munich, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 Munich, Germany;
[email protected] (R.P.);
[email protected] (M.W.) * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 16 April 2020; Accepted: 17 May 2020; Published: 19 May 2020 Abstract: Various types of heterogeneous observations can be combined within a parameter estimation process using spherical radial basis functions (SRBFs) for regional gravity field refinement. In this process, regularization is in most cases inevitable, and choosing an appropriate value for the regularization parameter is a crucial issue. This study discusses the drawbacks of two frequently used methods for choosing the regularization parameter, which are the L-curve method and the variance component estimation (VCE). To overcome their drawbacks, two approaches for the regularization parameter determination are proposed, which combine the L-curve method and VCE. The first approach, denoted as “VCE-Lc”, starts with the calculation of the relative weights between the observation techniques by means of VCE. Based on these weights, the L-curve method is applied to determine the regularization parameter. In the second approach, called “Lc-VCE”, the L-curve method determines first the regularization parameter, and it is set to be fixed during the calculation of the relative weights between the observation techniques from VCE.