Avionics Navigation Systems [Hardcover]

Myron Kayton (Author), Walter R. Fried (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471547956 | ISBN-13: 978-0471547952 | Publication Date: April 1997 | Edition: 2

An indispensable resource for all those who design, build, manage, and operate electronic navigation systems

Avionics Navigation Systems, Second Edition, is a complete guide to the art and science of modern electronic navigation, focusing on aircraft. It covers electronic navigation systems in civil and military aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, and manned spacecraft. It has been thoroughly updated and expanded to include all of the major advances that have occurred since the publication of the classic first edition. It covers the entire field from basic navigation principles, equations, and state-of-the-art hardware to emerging technologies. Each chapter is devoted to a different system or technology and provides detailed information about its functions, design characteristics, equipment configurations, performance limitations, and directions for the future. You'll find everything you need to know about:
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Traditional ground-based radio navigation
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Satellite systems: GPS, GLONASS, and their augmentations
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New inertial systems, including optical rate sensors, micromechanical accelerometers, and high-accuracy stellar-inertial navigators Instrument Landing System and its successors
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Integrated communication-navigation systems used on battlefields
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Airborne mapping, Doppler, and multimode radars
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Terrain matching
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Special needs of military aircraft
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And much more

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A unified treatment of the principles and practices of modern navigation sensors and systems. This updated edition follows the format of its predecessor describing the basic functions and principles, design characteristics and equipment configurations, performance limitations, and sources of error. Coverage includes ground-based radio-navigation system aids; integrated communication-navigation systems; inertial and stellar-inertial navigation systems; air-data sensors and algorithms that derive airspeed, angles of attack and sideslip, and barometric altitude; attitude and heading sensors and displays; Doppler radars, radar altimeters, and mapping radars; and terrain map-matching.

From the Back Cover

An indispensable resource for all those who design, build, manage, and operate electronic navigation systems

Avionics Navigation Systems, Second Edition, is a complete guide to the art and science of modern electronic navigation, focusing on aircraft. It covers electronic navigation systems in civil and military aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, and manned spacecraft. It has been thoroughly updated and expanded to include all of the major advances that have occurred since the publication of the classic first edition. It covers the entire field from basic navigation principles, equations, and state-of-the-art hardware to emerging technologies. Each chapter is devoted to a different system or technology and provides detailed information about its functions, design characteristics, equipment configurations, performance limitations, and directions for the future. You'll find everything you need to know about:

• Traditional ground-based radio navigation

• Satellite systems: GPS, GLONASS, and their augmentations

• New inertial systems, including optical rate sensors, micromechanical accelerometers, and high-accuracy stellar-inertial navigators Instrument Landing System and its successors

• Integrated communication-navigation systems used on battlefields

• Airborne mapping, Doppler, and multimode radars

• Terrain matching

• Special needs of military aircraft

• And much more

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Interscience; 2 edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471547956
• ISBN-13: 978-0471547952
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.9 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #865,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive text on the subject, for engineers and pilots, July 26, 1999

By 

Glen Bishop [e-mail] (Bloomfield, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Avionics Navigation Systems (Hardcover)

Engineers and pilots alike will appreciate this book if they skim the math and read it as a survey text, as all possible functional behavior is described for GPS, GLONASS, Inertial systems, VOR, DME, ILS, and more. The intro to the math involved is good, as it walks the line between satisfying a mathematician's love of state space and spherical trig, while not losing the average reader. As an Avionics Systems Engineer tasked with avionics integration, I found the right level of detail when the book describes electronic hardware, software requirements, and system error sources. As a "cover-to-cover" exercise, the reader is advised that this book asks for a high level of commitment. Read a chapter or two at a time (with trash novels in between), the reader's curiosity will sustain him /her for the duration of this well written book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book with exhaustive detail, October 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Avionics Navigation Systems (Hardcover)

This book contians all the information that anyone could ever need. It also has the best index I have ever seen, making finding the smallest section easy. It does not really cover the basics of each system, but provided you have a basic knowledge then it will build on that. It is up to the reader to decide how much depth they want to go into, this book will take them as far as they could possibly need to go.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A collection of disjoint writings, April 25, 2000

By 

"dsshokie" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Avionics Navigation Systems (Hardcover)

This book was obviously intended for the experienced navigator or system designer. It certainly reviews all of the traditional and modern navigation systems. However, in trying to explain every minute detail, the basic workings of the technology are never explained.

The average reader will have a very difficult time in just trying to understand how a GPS or VOR or DME system works. A search on the web will present much better explanations.

This is, by far, not a quick read, it is burdened by volumes of mathematics that are of little practical use, and the chapters, written by different authors, are often disjoint.

Simple, key explanations are mentioned (if at all) after pages of technical confusion. It is as if the author could spend several pages explaining to the average desert nomad how to build a snowman in every minute detail -- how to grow the carrot for the nose, how to pick out the best black rocks for the eyes, how to make the body round to "n" degrees of precision -- but he forgets to mention (until page 89) that, oh by the way, you need to have cold weather and snow to make one.