I purchased this book mostly for its technical content and less for its descriptive narrative about inertial nav and GPS. My goal was to use the book as a basis for some analysis. Unfortunately, I can't recommend the book to someone who can't re-derive the equations in the book.
One reviewer from New Mexico wrote: "There are some math errors [in Farrell & Barth's book] that are obvious, but when trying to use a text as a reference I don't think it's my job to double check the author's math!" But, lo! I think one NEEDS to check the math in this book because even the most trivial of computations can and do have errors in them. For example, one thing really irksome about the book is that the matrix representation for the cross product operation in Appendix A has an overall factor of (-1) buried in it -- and it's wrong. Then the authors happily propagate this interesting "sign convention" throughout the book, meaning that you have to do a double take each time the book uses it. It's a horrendous mess.
The same NM reviewer also asked: "Can I trust this book as a reference?" I think it's hit or miss. I spent over a week deriving and implementing the equations in Chapter 6. And even though I have some experience with coordinate frames and dynamics in rotating frames, it took a lot of effort to work through everything myself and correct the errors. Luckily most of the final equations are, indeed, correct in Chapter 6 -- save for a sign or two. On the other hand, I'm still trying to find the book's sign errors in the mapping from the quaternions to the Euler angles (Chapter 2). Is there really an error? Or am I doing something stupid? With this book, I'll have to figure it out for myself.
This book has the potential to become an excellent reference and resource for inertial nav and/or GPS nav information. But as it stands, it's a sketch of a book that leaves it up to the reader to wonder whether it's him/her that's missed the point, or the authors who mangled yet another equation.
