The financial support of Sanjay Garg and Donald Simon (no relation to the
author) at the NASA Glenn Research Center was instrumental in allowing me to
pursue research in the area of optimal state estimation, and indirectly led to the
idea for this book. I am thankful to Eugenio Villaseca, the Chair of the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cleveland State University, for
his encouragement and support of my research and writing efforts. Dennis Feucht
and Jonathan Litt reviewed the first draft of the book and offered constructive
criticism that made the book better than it otherwise would have been. I am also
indebted to the two anonymous reviewers of the proposal for this book, who made
suggestions that strengthened the material presented herein. I acknowledge the
work of Sandy Buettner, Joe Connolly, Classica Jain, Aaron Radke, Bryan Welch,
and Qing Zheng, who were students in my Optimal State Estimation class in Fall
2005. They contributed some of the problems at the end of the chapters and made
many suggestions for improvement that helped clarify the subject matter. Finally
I acknowledge the love and support of my wife, Annette, whose encouragement of
my endeavors has always been above and beyond the call of duty.