Sunday, September 29, 2013

Cell Phone GPS Tracking Basics

Solutions Designed for Emergency Response Can Be Employed for Tracking Smartphones. Cell tracking, cell phone GPS and cell phone tracker software applications are undoubtedly drawing curiosity from potential buyers, cellphone companies and program developers. The most up to date cell phones contain GPS locator functionality to track mobile phone location.


 Tracking


GPS receivers, regardless of whether inside of a handset, or simply a dedicated Portable gps tracking system, determine position by accurately timing the signals passed on by GPS satellites. This critical information provides the moment the message was transmitted, highly accurate orbital details (technically called the ephemeris), along with the general system state and projected orbits of all GPS satellites (technically referenced as the almanac). GPS receivers often 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 is sometimes caused when the GPS smartphone has been unused for days or weeks, or has been transported a significant 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 signal


s and find initial location more quickly.


GPS Hot Start is whenever the GPS enabled mobile phone keeps its last identified location, the satellites that were in view at the time, as well as the almanac information in memory, and attempts to connect to the same satellites and calculate a fresh 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 turned 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 resets and tries to connect to satellite signals and computes the latest location. The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites toseek because it saved its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are within view. The Warm Start will need more time compared to Hot Start but not as much as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous data, and attempts to locate satellites a


nd attain a GPS lock. This takes longer than other methods since there is no known reference data. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to try to lock onto a satellite transmission from any accessible satellites.


In order to get improved GPS lock times mobile phone manufacturers and telco operators introduced Assisted GPS technology. This downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the mobile phone basic position. GPS Receivers will get a faster lock in return for a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, generally known as A-GPS or AGPS, enhances the performance of standard GPS in smartphones connected to the cell network. In the United States Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. This is a method of utilizing the cellular network to accelerate finding of GPS satellites.


A-GPS assists location tracking performance of smartphones (as well as other connected devices) in a couple of ways:


The first method will be assisting to get a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and stores data concerning satellite location using the cell network so the coordinates data does not need to be downloaded via the satellite.


The second method is by assisting locate cell phones when GPS signals are weak or blocked. Because GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall buildings, and do not pass through building interiors well A-GPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to approximate location when GPS signals are not obtainable.


When satellite signals are not available, or accuracy is less important than battery life, utilizing Cell-ID is a good alternative to GPS smartphone location. The location of the mobile phone might be computed by the cellular network cell id, that pinpoints the cell tower the smartphone is connected to. By understanding the position of this tower, then you can know roughly where the device will be. But, a tower can cover an enormous area, from a few hundred meters, in high populationdensity zones, to a few kilometers in lower density zones. This is why location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Nonetheless monitoring via CellID still can provide a very viable alternative.


Another way of formulating mobile phone location is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation makes use of signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals traveling from your cellular phone to at least 3 cell towers to calculate location.


Cell Phone GPS Tracking Basics

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