Review of GPS Satellite Surveying, third edition by Alfred Leick: John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2004. ISBN: 0-471-05930-7, Price: $120.

This book is a third edition recently updated to include new developments in global positioning system (GPS) theory that have occurred since the release of the second edition in 1995. The book highlights high-accuracy GPS positioning and is intended for use by surveyors, civil engineers, transportation engineers, geodesists, geologists, geographers, technicians, and students—basically anyone with a desire to learn how scientists use least-squares adjustments, geodesy, and various physical models to process data collected from existing and future global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The book consists of nine chapters and three appendixes, as well as an extensive list of bibliographic references and an index.

Chapter 1 gives the history of GPS and presents a timeline of the major milestones. Chapter 2 discusses such geodetic reference systems as the international terrestrial reference frame, and the international celestial reference frame, and how to go from one to the other. It includes new material on the effects of polar motion, tectonic plate motion, solid earth tides, and ocean loading. It introduces the three-dimensional (3D) geodetic model as the preferred, unifying model for combining satellite positioning with classical surveying measurements. It also discusses the geoid and reductions to the ellipsoid. Chapter 3 outlines basic satellite orbit theory such as the Keplerian elements and the major forces that perturb satellite orbits: variations in the earth’s gravity field, the attraction of the sun and moon, and solar radiation pressure. New sections have been added to address eclipse transits and yaw maneuvers by GPS satellites; the planned L2C-, L5-, and M-codes for GPS modernization; the Russian GLONASS navigation message; and the upcoming Galileo satellite system. Chapter 4 contains basically the same comprehensive treatment of least-squares adjustments covered in the second edition: stochastic and mathematical models, variance-covariance propagation, and the mixed adjustment model—together with the special cases of the observation equation and condition equation models, linearization, sequential solutions, minimal and inner constraints, properties of error ellipses, redundancy numbers, internal and external reliability, and data snooping. A short section has also been added on Kalman filtering; this section nicely defines the concepts behind Gauss–Markov processes, white noise, and random walk.

Chapter 5 presents the observation equations for the many different types of pseudorange and carrier phase observables used with GPS. It discusses the single-, double-, and triple-differences for the carrier phases and adds new sections that describe the correction for the rotation of the earth during signal transmission and the P1-P2 and C1-P1 code biases needed to compute accurate pseudoranges for GPS. Chapter 6, on the troposphere and ionosphere, has been extensively rewritten to include additional material. The Saastamoinen equations for zenith hydrostatic delay and zenith wet delay are now given, together with the hydrostatic and wet Niell mapping functions and a horizontal gradient model for the troposphere. Also given are equations for the ionospheric-free observable and new sections on tropospheric absorption and water vapor radiometers.

Chapter 7 was one of my favorites; it discusses additional error models needed for such demanding applications as orbit determination and precise point positioning: the phase windup correction, phase center offsets at the satellite, receiver antenna phase center variations, dilution of precision (DOP) considerations, and pseudorange multipath effects. It also contains new sections on the products of the international GPS service (IGS), closed-form navigation solutions using pseudoranges, the geometry-free combinations, real-time precise point positioning, ambiguity fixing, GLONASS carrier phase processing, and local network corrections. A new eight-page section has been added to discuss the popular LAMBDA technique for ambiguity fixing. Chapter 8 examines GPS vector networks and presents three excellent example networks that illustrate how to use inner constraints, error ellipses, variance factors, and redundancy numbers to check the quality of a network. Chapter 9 discusses in detail the reduction of observations to the ellipsoid and various conformal mapping models, such as those used for state plane coordinates.

Appendix A gives a brief review of spherical trigonometry, linear algebra, linearization, and statistics (including 1D distributions and hypothesis testing). Appendixes B and C give a detailed, mathematical treatment of computations on the ellipsoid, as well as conformal mapping models such as the transverse Mercator and Lambert conformal models (much of this material has been included by the author because the classical texts on these subjects are now out of print and hard to find).

In general, this text is an excellent one that contains much updated material, so even experienced GPS users will learn something new. The new edition is actually 125 pages shorter than the second edition, but the book’s size is smaller and the author has omitted sections that are no longer applicable. I was somewhat disappointed that the copyediting was so poor in this first printing. I was given a list of 34 errata (mostly for equations) and found another 30 or so grammatical and typographical errors (misspelled words, mislabeled figures, and numerous cases where the singular and plural forms of nouns and verbs did not agree). Most of these were mistakes that no spell checker would catch—the author should have relied on knowledgeable reviewers instead. Other small distractions might include questioning why the author chose to add nine pages on such a specialized topic as water vapor radiometers, and why additional references were not cited for certain topics other than those related to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (e.g., the group at the University of Berne has also done work related to the P1-P2 code biases and global ionospheric models; and Jan Kouba and Pierre Heroux have several interesting papers on precise point positioning and the use of IGS products). But these complaints are minor ones about an otherwise excellent book. The fonts used in this edition are much better than those used in the second edition. Some readers might find themselves wishing for a more detailed and complete treatment of some topics, but I found the author’s clear and concise explanations refreshing; the associated references are always given so that the interested reader can find additional details.