Different Approaches to Being a GPS Phone Tracker Raise the Question: Do you really know where they are?
Across the country and around the world, GPS tracking, mobile GPS and cell phone tracker software are getting a lot of attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers. The most up-to-date cell phones have GPS position features to track phone location. These features, and others such as text messaging, web access and the capability to use other software make mobiles great gadgets. But GPS satellites aren’t always available, for example when the handset is in a structure such as an school, mall, or even in an automobile. That doesn’t mean smartphone tracking isn’t possible, but it does mean there are other methods of being a tracker.
To track a mobile phone involves several primary methods of formulating mobile phone position. GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID. All these technologies convert smartphones into mobile tracking devices. These systems can be viewed as Network Based, Handset Based or a Hybrid approach. GPS location is Handset based as it requires software applications installed on the smartphone along with GPS hardware. Triangulation and CellID are Network Based as they use the equipment and information from the cellular provider. Hybrid systems combine methods to make best use of available information and to make location phone tracking faster.
Mobile phone GPS is what people usually think of when looking at tracking mobile phones. GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most well known and more accurate technology of tracking. But GPS requires satellites to be in direct line of site of the handset.
Sometimes thick cloud cover and thick foliage impedes with reception.
If riding in a car the signals might not reach the smartphone. Some smartphones will keep the last known GPS location, others might not.
Another thing with smartphone GPS location is the possibility of battery drain. It is important to be able to remotely adjust the frequency of taking GPS position. Choosing real-time or periodic sampling affects both the accuracy of determining location as well as battery life.
GPS receivers, whether in a cell phone, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, determine position by precisely timing the signals transmitted by GPS satellites. This data includes the time the message was transmitted, precise orbital information (the ephemeris), and the general system health and estimated orbits of all GPS satellites (the almanac). GPS receivers sometimes take a long time to become ready to navigate after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to finding GPS satellite signals. This delay can be caused when the GPS device has been unused for days or weeks, or has been moved 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 location more quickly.
GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled handset recalls its last known position, the satellites that were in view before, the almanac data in memory, and tries to obtain the same satellites and compute a new position based upon the previous information. This is almost always the quickest GPS lock but Hot Start only works if the phone is generally in the same location as when the GPS was last turned off.
GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled smartphone keeps its last calculated position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and attempts to obtain satellite signals and computes a new position.
The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites toseek because it stored its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are in range. The Warm Start will take longer than the Hot Start but not as long as a Cold Start.
With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous data, and attempts to locate satellites and achieve a GPS lock. This takes more time because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to try to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.
In order to have better GPS lock times mobile phone manufacturers and network operators introduced Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the smartphone general position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock in exchange for a few kilobytes of data transmission.
A-GPS assists location tracking performance of mobile phones (and other connected devices) in two ways:
One way is by helping to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). Assisted GPS acquires and storesdata about satellite locationvia the cellular network so the coordinates information does require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
Another method is by helping locate mobile phones when GPS signals are weak or impeded. As mentioned before GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. AGPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to estimate position 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 useful substitute to GPS smartphone tracking. The location of the handset can be computed by the cell network cell id, that identifies the cell tower the phone is using. By knowing the location of this tower, then you can know approximately where the mobile phone 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 lower than GPS accuracy. Nevertheless location from CellID still provides a very good substitute.
Another way of formulating cell phone position 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 estimate position.
To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cellular phone companies must be able to provide authorities with device 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 systems are able to obtain accuracy down to 3-10m. This depends upon many factors, as GPS signals are often very weak and are impacted by many variables. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cellular network provider uses triangulation techniques to calculate the position of the handset, its accuracy is proven to be much worse 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 help in the triangulation calculation. In remote areas position accuracy may be off as much as a mile.
It may be critical to consider how GPS location software applications handle the data and controls device settings. Having real time tracking on demand, or preferring to minimize battery use and data transmission should be a minimum requirement. Typically the application determines the location with a GPS receiver and transmits the tracking data to a server through a data connection. The data connection to the server is usually made via the Internet. How often GPS samples are taken and how often and by what method the data is sent to the server impact effectiveness and costs.
Consider that there is a basic difference between mobile phone GPS Tracking and Navigation. GPS phone tracking is usually associated with someone maintaining records of either real-time or historical cell phone location, while Navigation deals with the smartphone user figuring out how to get from point A to point B.
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