Patent ID: 7376507

Claim:
A geophysics-based method for fixing a position of a stationary earth object, comprising: a) providing a model that predicts tidal acceleration at a plurality of locations on the earth as a function of time and location relative to a reference time in an earth-fixed frame comprising orthogonal axes, b) measuring an acceleration in at least one direction of the stationary earth object at an actual location for a period of time relative to the reference time with a sensor package in a sensor frame comprising orthogonal axes, c) transforming the sensor frame using an estimated rotation matrix, d) estimating a position of the object to input to the model to provide a predicted acceleration at the estimated position, e) comparing the measured acceleration in the transformed frame to the predicted acceleration in the earth-fixed frame with a pattern recognition algorithm to provide a goodness-of-fit metric for the estimated position, and f) repeating steps b) to e) at least once to provide the position fix for the actual location of the stationary earth object.