A comparison between some direct and iterative methods for certian large scale godetic least squares problems

The purpose of this paper is to describe and compare some numerical methods for solving large dimensional linear least squares problems that arise in geodesy and, more specially, from Doppler positioning. The methods that are considered are the direct orthogonal decomposition, and the combination of conjugate gradient type algorithms with projections as well as the exploitation of “Property A”. Numerical results are given and the respective advantage of the methods are discussed with respect to such parameters as CPU time, input/output and storage requirements. Extensions of the results to more general problemsare also discussed.