Effects of errors-in-variables on weighted least squares estimation

Although total least squares (TLS) is more rigorous than the weighted least squares (LS) method to estimate the parameters in an errors-in-variables (EIV) model, it is computationally much more complicated than the weighted LS method. For some EIV problems, the TLS and weighted LS methods have been shown to produce practically negligible differences in the estimated parameters. To understand under what conditions we can safely use the usual weighted LS method, we systematically investigate the effects of the random errors of the design matrix on weighted LS adjustment. We derive the effects of EIV on the estimated quantities of geodetic interest, in particular, the model parameters, the variance–covariance matrix of the estimated parameters and the variance of unit weight. By simplifying our bias formulae, we can readily show that the corresponding statistical results obtained by Hodges and Moore (Appl Stat 21:185–195, 1972) and Davies and Hutton (Biometrika 62:383–391, 1975) are actually the special cases of our study. The theoretical analysis of bias has shown that the effect of random matrix on adjustment depends on the design matrix itself, the variance–covariance matrix of its elements and the model parameters. Using the derived formulae of bias, we can remove the effect of the random matrix from the weighted LS estimate and accordingly obtain the bias-corrected weighted LS estimate for the EIV model. We derive the bias of the weighted LS estimate of the variance of unit weight. The random errors of the design matrix can significantly affect the weighted LS estimate of the variance of unit weight. The theoretical analysis successfully explains all the anomalously large estimates of the variance of unit weight reported in the geodetic literature. We propose bias-corrected estimates for the variance of unit weight. Finally, we analyze two examples of coordinate transformation and climate change, which have shown that the bias-corrected weighted LS method can perform numerically as well as the weighted TLS method.