Thursday, October 24, 2013

Do you really know where your Mobile Workforce or Children are?

GPS tracking, mobile GPS and cell phone track applications are gaining focus from potential buyers, mobile phone businesses and software makers. The most popular cell phones integrate GPS location functionality to track telephone position.


 Mobile Tracker


GPS receivers, irrespective of whether inside of a smart phone, or perhaps a specific Portable gps tracking device, compute specific location through process of precisely timing the signals sent by GPS satellites. This critical information comes with the moment the message was sent, precise orbital details (technically referred to as the ephemeris), as well as the basic system status and projected orbits of all GPS satellites (technically referenced as the almanac). GPS receivers sometimes take longer 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 if the GPS mobile phone has been unused for days or weeks, or has been moved a far distance while unused 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 acquire signals and find i


nitial position more quickly.


GPS Hot Start means whenever the GPS enabled device keeps its last calculated position, the satellites that had been in view before, as well as the almanac information in memory, and tries to obtain the same satellites and compute a fresh location 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 switched off. GPS Warm Start is whenever the GPS enabled smartphone remembers its last known position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and attempts to connect to satellite signals and calculates the latest location. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites tolook for because it saved its last known location and the almanac data helps determine which satellites are visible in the sky. The Warm Start is going to take longer compared to Hot Start although not as long as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous info


rmation, and tries to find satellites and accomplish a GPS lock. This normally takes longer than other methods because there is no known reference data. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver must attempt to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.


So that you can have better GPS lock times cellular phone manufacturers and wireless operators developed Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the device basic location. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, also referred to as A-GPS or AGPS, improves the performance of standard GPS in handsets connected to the cell network. In America Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. This is a method of utilizing the cell network to speed up finding of GPS satellites.


A-GPS assists location tracking performance of cell phones (and also other related devices) in a couple of ways:


One method is by assisting to acquire a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). A-GPS acquires and stores data in relation to satellite position using the cellular network and so the location information does not require to be downloaded from the the satellite.


The next technique is by assisting locate cell phones when GPS signals are weak or not available. Due to the fact GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not go through building interiors well Assisted GPS makes use of proximity to cellular towers to calculate location when GPS signals are not accessible.


If satellite signals are not readily available, or accuracy and precision is less important than life of the battery, using Cell-ID is a good substitute to GPS mobile phone location. The location of the cell phone might be approximated by the cellular network cell id, that pinpoints the cell tower the smartphone is connected to. By having the location of this tower, you may know roughly where the mobile phone is. Still, a tower can cover a large area, from a couple of hundred meters, in high populationdensity zones, to a few kilometers in lower density areas. This is the reason location CellID accuracy is less than than GPS accuracy. Having said that tracking via CellID still offers quite a helpful alternative.


Another method of calculating handset position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation utilizes signal analysis data to determine the time it takes signals to travel from your telephone to a minimum of 3 cell towers to determine location.


Do you really know where your Mobile Workforce or Children are?

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