Maximum likelihood and optimum location of observation sites in geodetic and spatial surveying
Boghos D. Sivazlian · Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation · 1978
In geodetic and spatial surveying, accurate statistical es-timates of the Cartesian coordinates of a stationary target depend, in general, on such factors as target position, number and type of instruments, their location, their accuracy, and their mix. Direct measurements are assumed to be made in elevation, azimuth, and range with errors independently and normally distributed. For a mix of instruments, theoretical arguments are established using maximum likelihood estimation to determine the optimal siting of the instruments which minimizes (GDOP)2 or the square of the geo-metric dilution of precision = sum of the variances of the estimates in the three orthogonal directions.