[Proj] Accurate algorithm for geodesic calculations
Charles Karney
ckarney at sarnoff.com
Sat Feb 28 17:17:14 EST 2009
I've implemented an algorithm for geodesic calculations for an ellipsoid
with the following features:
* It uses expansions accurate to 8th order in the ellipsoid flattening.
This gives 12 nm accuracy using doubles and 6 pm accuracy using long
doubles.
* The direct calculation uses a reverted series and is therefore
non-iterative. A mechanism is provided to do a series of direct
calculations on a single geodesic which is faster by a factor of 2.5.
* The inverse calculation uses Newton's method to determine the
azimuth. This typically converges in 3 iterations. I haven't found
any cases where it fails to converge.
* I provide a large test set geodesics for the WGS84 ellipsoid which is
accurate to 0.1 pm and 10^-18 degree. Thus was generated by Maxima
using 20th order expansions (approximately accurate to 1 part in
10^50).
Further information is available at
http://charles.karney.info/geographic/geodesic.html
The code itself (C++ classes and a program for doing geodesic
calculations) is available at
http://charles.karney.info/geographic
This compiles with g++ and Visual Studio 2005.
Still to do:
* Reduce the order of the expansions to match precision available with
doubles.
* Improve the starting guesses for Newton's method to reduce to number
of iterations in some cases.
* More documentation on the method.
* Provide Maxima code to generate the expansions.
--
Charles Karney <ckarney at sarnoff.com>
Sarnoff Corporation, Princeton, NJ 08543-5300
URL: http://charles.karney.info
Tel: +1 609 734 2312
Fax: +1 609 734 2662
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