Far-Zone Effects for Spherical Integral Transformations I: Formulas for the Radial Boundary Value Problem and its Derivatives

Integral transformations represent an important mathematical tool for gravitational field modelling. A basic assumption of integral transformations is the global data coverage, but availability of high-resolution and accurate gravitational data may be restricted. Therefore, we decompose the global integration into two parts: (1) the effect of the near zone calculated by the numerical integration of data within a spherical cap and (2) the effect of the far zone due to data beyond the spherical cap synthesised by harmonic expansions. Theoretical and numerical aspects of this decomposition have frequently been studied for isotropic integral transformations on the sphere, such as Hotine’s, Poisson’s, and Stokes’s integral formulas. In this article, we systematically review the mathematical theory of the far-zone effects for the spherical integral formulas, which transform the disturbing gravitational potential or its purely radial derivatives into observable quantities of the gravitational field, i.e. the disturbing gravitational potential and its radial, horizontal, or mixed derivatives of the first, second, or third order. These formulas are implemented in a MATLAB software and validated in a closed-loop simulation. Selected properties of the harmonic expansions are investigated by examining the behaviour of the truncation error coefficients. The mathematical formulations presented here are indispensable for practical solutions of direct or inverse problems in an accurate gravitational field modelling or when studying statistical properties of integral transformations.