Global Positioning System: Theory and Practice [Paperback]

This text provides a great introduction to the *theory* of GPS. It is rigorous on the mathematics so I wouldn't recommend it for someone who just needs a general understanding of how GPS operates or an understanding of the applications of GPS (e.g. software project managers or other personnel who aren't actually implementing sat or receiver software). For those who need to dive into the theory and algorithms with of GPS, you should have a firm understanding of trigonometry, linear algebra (matrix operations) and basic calculus before reading this text. As one reviewer pointed out, it does cover the application of GPS to surveying in depth.

If you are software engineer working on an application that only needs to know what comes out of a GPS receiver's serial data port and how to make use of if, this book isn't for you. There are other texts available that cover most of the material that you need. If you need to know what comes out of a GPS receiver's data port (the interface specification), you should refer to (controlled access) the latest version of ICD-GPS-153 "GPS User Equipment Interface Control Document for the GPS Standard Serial Interface Protocol". Then refer to numerous other texts on coordinate transformations, projections, etc. However, this is not to say that this book is completely useless for such a developer as it does cover material such as coordinate transformations with respect to the GPS reference system (WGS-84) and it touches on the topic of projections that I will return to shortly.

My primary complaint with the text is the notation utilized. The text makes use of non-standard (or perhaps it would be better to say "archaic") vector and matrix notation. At least, non-standard in my experience. This could be driven by technical limitations in the publishing/printing process used by Springer or other reasons. I personally have few texts by the publisher with which to compare this text. I found myself having to make notes or constantly flipping back-and-forth just to remind myself of what a particular symbol represented. If you have a background in geodesy or Geographic Information Systems (GIS), you may find the notation alien in appearance.

The text offers an inverse method of transforming Geocentric ECEF (X,Y,Z) coordinates into Geodetic (latitude, longitude, height). A topic that many authors shy away from. I haven't studied the approach or compared it to algorithms that I currently use. Therefore, for the software developer, you might want to compare these results with those obtained by other algorithms developed by Bowring, Nautiyal and others. There are several variations of Bowring's algorithm sprinkled around the Internet, each developed to meet specific needs (e.g. extreme accuracy or extreme speed of execution). The developer should explore all algorithmic approaches and determine the best for his/her application.

The text touches on the Transverse Mercator projection and the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid reference system. The coverage of UTM is inadequate for someone needing to implement it in software. I would refer the reader to the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA, now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA) document 8358.2 "The Universal Grids: Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) and Universal Polar Stereographic (UPS)" for a thorough treatment of the UTM grid reference system. This document is available to the public on the Internet.

For a text that covers practice/applications of GPS, I would like to see some detailed discussion of the interfaces between receivers and external equipment (i.e. computers & application software) with respect to ICD-GPS-153. I believe that some discussion of this can be made without revealing sensitive interface details.

The reference section is superb and the book sprinkles many useful online resources throughout the text.

I found the comparison of GPS to GLONASS (Russian equivalent to GPS) particularly interesting. There is only a brief mention of Galileo (the European civial "GPS" system).

As a commercial GPS user, I was looking for a book that would offer a fairly basic overview of GPS, but that would still go into significant detail. This book does exactly that, but it also covers a lot of the mathematical theory behind GPS. This book certainly isn't introductory and I think would be more suited to a surveyor with a good knowledge of surveying techniques who was interested in GPS. The mathematics gets a bit heavy for a non-mathematician but Chapter 7 (Surveying with GPS) is an excellent introduction/review of the practical uses of GPS in the field. A good intermediate-advanced level book, probably very suited to students.

This is an excellent book for anyone that works with spacecraft geometry and/or timekeeping. It contains concise descriptions of coordinate systems, orbital elements and timekeeping. I've been using it as an algorithm 'cookbook'. This is not a book for a casual GPS user, or someone who is sqeamish about math. It's much easier to use than the Astronomical Almanac for basic algorithms. Like a fool, I lent it out. Now I need to buy another one.

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