The book provides a detailed account of strapdown navigation systems from an analytical and computational perspective. Included are self-contained tutorial chapters on the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Kalman Filter, and a chapter devoted to six practical applications of aided navigation systems. The book is intended as a reference work for practitioners, as a tutorial work for those entering the field of strapdown navigation systems and as a text for students in aerospace engineering and related academic pursuits.

Mario Ignagni served as an analyst and design engineer for the Apollo Command/Service Module thrust-vector control system, and in the same capacity for the Space Shuttle fuel-mixture control system. He was a member of the team that developed the first strapdown navigation system for commercial and military aviation applications, incorporating newly developed laser-gyro technology. The author has published extensively in the areas of strapdown navigation system algorithms and Kalman filter theory. He received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Detroit, and an M.S. degree in Control Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.