Methods for Phone GPS Tracking and Cell Phone Location raise the question: Do you really know where they are?
Methods for Cell Phone Tracking and Mobile Location Raise the Question: Do you really know where they are?
Across the country and around the world, Cell tracking, cell phone GPS and cell phone GPS track software are attracting attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers. The newest mobile phones include GPS locator features to track phone location. These features, and others such as text messaging, internet access and the ability to utilize other applications make mobiles great gadgets. However GPS satellites aren’t always available, such as when the phone is in a building such as an house, shopping center, or even in a car. That doesn’t mean mobile phone locating isn’t possible, but it does mean there are other methods of being a locator.
To track a mobile phone involves several main ways of determining mobile phone position. GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID. All these technologies transform mobile phones 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 mobile phone 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 phone tracking faster.
GPS on cell phones is what people commonly think of when looking at locating mobile phones. GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most popular and more accurate technology of tracking. But GPS requires satellites to be in direct line of site of the mobile phone.
It doesn’t work particularly well indoors or in dense cities.
If the handset is in a structure, for example your office, restaurant. Some cell phones will store the last known GPS location, others might not.
Another issue with cell phone GPS tracking is the potential of battery drain. It is important to be able to remotely adjust how often of taking GPS position. Choosing real-time or periodic sampling affects both the accuracy of determining position as well as battery life.
GPS receivers, whether in a cell phone, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, calculate position by precisely timing the signals transmitted 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 often 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 delay can be caused when the GPS cell phone has been turned off for days or weeks, or has been transported 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 satellite signals and determine initial location faster.
GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled smartphone keeps its last known location, the satellites that were in view at the time, the almanac data in memory, and makes an attempt to lock onto the same satellites and determine a new position based upon the previous data. This is almost always the quickest GPS lock but Hot Start only works if the phone is in the same general area as when the GPS was last switched off.
GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled smartphone remembers its last calculated position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and tries to lock onto satellite signals and calculates a new position.
The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites toseek because it kept its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are in range. 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 deletes all the previous information, and attempts to locate satellites and achieve a GPS lock. This takes the longest 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.
Assisted GPS, also known as A-GPS or AGPS, enhances the performance of standard GPS in cell phones connected to the cell network. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the smartphone general position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission.
A-GPS improves location tracking performance of mobile phones (and other connected devices) in two ways:
The first way is by helping to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and archivesinformation about the location of satellitesusing the cell network so the coordinates information does require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
Another method is by assisting position mobile phones when GPS signals are weak or blocked. As discussed above GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. A-GPS uses 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 cell phone location. The location of the mobile phone can be calculated by the cellular 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 cell phone is. But, a tower can cover a huge area, from a few hundred meters, in high density areas, to several kilometers in lower density areas. This is why location CellID precision is lower than GPS accuracy. Nevertheless tracking from CellID still provides a very good alternative.
Another way of determining handset 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 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 uses triangulation techniques to determine the position of the cell phone, its accuracy is proven to be much worse than that of GPS. MLS is also impacted by factors similar to GPS in the sense of the barriers impeding signal strength 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.
In general it comes down to 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. Generally 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 information is sent to the server impact usefulness and costs.
Consider that there is a fundamental difference between handset GPS Tracking and Navigation. GPS phone tracking is normally related to someone keeping records of either real-time or historical handset location, while Navigation deals with the cell phone user figuring out how to get from point A to point B.
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