Models for controlling national and continental networks

Doppler derived geocentric and relative geodetic positions are now widely used for detecting and controlling systematic scale and orientation errors in large classical terrestrial triangulation networks. However, the combined adjustment of terrestrial and space data raises several theoretical problems, including the choice of appropriate reference systems, the a priori weighting of the various types of observations, the modelling of systematic errors and the conditioning of the network in terms of internal and external rank deficiencies. Tests with large national networks show conclusively that, without correct modelling, systematic errors will largely be unaffected by “higher order” observations.