GPS tracking, cell phone GPS and mobile phone tracking software are attracting attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers. Mobile communications means more than just placing a phone call while on the move. The most up-to-date smartphones have GPS position functionality to track phone location. These features, along with others such as SMS texting, web access and the ability to utilize other software make mobiles great gadgets. However GPS satellites aren’t always available, for example when the phone is in a building such as an office, shopping center, or even when driving. That doesn’t mean mobile phone locating isn’t possible, but it does mean there are other ways of being a tracker.
To track a cell phone involves several main methods of calculating cell phone position. GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID. All these technologies transform smartphones into mobile tracking systems. These systems can be viewed as Network Based, Handset Based or a Hybrid approach. GPS location is Handset based as it needs software programs installed on the smartphone in conjunction with GPS hardware. Triangulation and CellID are Network Based as they use the equipment and data from the wireless provider. Hybrid systems combine methods to make best use of available data and to make location cell tracking faster.
Mobile phone GPS is what people commonly think of when considering locating mobile phones. GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most well known and more accurate method of tracking. However GPS requires satellites to be in direct line of site of the smartphone. It doesn’t work particularly well indoors or in dense cities. If the handset is in a structure, for example your house, mall, or often riding in a car the signals might not reach the mobile phone. Sometimes heavy cloud cover and dense trees interferes with reception. Some mobile phones will retain the last known GPS location, others might not.
Another issue with mobile phone GPS tracking is the potential of wasting the battery. It is important to be able to remotely adjust how often of taking GPS position. Selecting real-time or periodic sampling affects both the resolution of determining position as well as how long the battery will last.
GPS receivers, whether in a smartphone, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, determine position by precisely timing the signals sent by GPS satellites. This information includes the time the message was transmitted, precise orbital information (the ephemeris), and the general system health and rough orbits of all GPS satellites (the almanac). GPS receivers sometimes take a long time to become ready to use after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to finding GPS satellite signals. This slow start can be caused when the GPS smartphone has been unused for days or weeks, or has been transported a far distance while turned off for. The GPS must update its almanac and ephemeris data and store it in memory. The GPS almanac is a set of data that every GPS satellite transmits. When a GPS receiver has current almanac data in memory, it can capture satellite signals and find initial position faster.
GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled handset keeps its last calculated location, the satellites that were in range before, the almanac data in memory, and attempts to connect to the same satellites and determine a new position based upon the previous data. This is usually the quickest GPS lock but Hot Start only works if the phone is generally in the same location as when the GPS was last switched off.
GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled cell phone keeps its last known location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in view. It performs a reset and tries to obtain satellite signals and computes a new position.
The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites tolook for because it kept its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are within view. The Warm Start will take more time than the Hot Start but not as long as a Cold Start.
With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous information, and attempts to locate satellites and accomplish a GPS lock. This takes more time because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.
In order to have better GPS lock times mobile phone manufacturers and telco operators developed Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the handset general position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock in exchange for a few kilobytes of data transmission.
Assisted GPS, also known as A-GPS or AGPS, improves the performance of standard GPS in cell phones connected to the cellular network. In the United States Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. This is a means of using the cellular network to accelerate finding of GPS satellites. A-GPS assists location tracking functions of mobile phones (and other connected devices) in a couple of ways:
The first way is by helping to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). Assisted GPS acquires and archivesinformation about the location of satellitesvia the cellular network so the position information doesn’t require to be downloaded via the satellite.
The next method is by assisting position handsets when GPS signals are weak or not available. As discussed above GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. AGPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to compute location when GPS signals are not available.
If satellite signals are not available, or accuracy is less important than battery life, using Cell-ID is a good substitute to GPS mobile phone location. The location of the device can be determined by the cellular network cell id, which identifies the cell tower the phone is connected to. By knowing the location of this tower, then you can know approximately where the handset is. But, a tower can cover a huge area, from a few hundred meters, in high density areas, to several miles in lower density areas. This is why location CellID precision is less than than GPS accuracy. Nevertheless tracking via CellID still provides a very useful substitute.
Another way of determining handset location is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation uses signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals to travel from your phone to at least three cell towers to determine position.
To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cellular phone companies must be able to provide authorities with mobile phone latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters. Cell Tower Triangulation doesn’t always meet this requirement. For comparison commercially available GPS modules are able to achieve accuracy down to less than 10 meters. This depends upon many factors, as GPS signals are often very weak and are affected by many environmental factors. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cell network provider utilizes triangulation techniques to estimate the position of the smartphone, its accuracy is proven to be less than than that of GPS. MLS is also affected by the same issues as GPS in the sense of the barriers impeding signal quality and the density of GSM towers to assist in the triangulation effort. In rural areas position accuracy may be off as much as a mile.
Generally speaking it is a matter of what location tracking system is available, and the need for accuracy. Hybrid methods are emerging that use various techniques in tandem to provide best available location given available resources. It might be critical to consider how GPS location software programs handle the data and controls handset settings. Having real time tracking on demand, or preferring to minimize battery use and data transmission should be expected. Typically the application determines the location with a GPS receiver and transmits the tracking data to a server through a cellular packet data connection. The data connection to the server is usually made over the Internet. How often GPS samples are taken and how often and by what method the data is sent to the server affect usefulness and costs.
Consider that there is a fundamental difference between handset GPS Tracking and Navigation. GPS cell tracking is typically related to someone maintaining records of either real-time or historical smartphone location, while Navigation deals with the handset user determining how to get from point A to point B.
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