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Methods for Phone GPS Tracking and Mobile Location raise the question: Do you really know where they are?
By CruiseDirector | March 26, 2010
Methods for Cell Phone Tracking and Cell Phone Location Raise the Question: Do you really know where they are?
Across the country and around the world, GPS tracking, mobile GPS and cell phone track software are attracting attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers. The most up-to-date mobile phones have GPS position functionality to track phone location. These features, along with others such as SMS message, web access and the ability to utilize other software make mobiles great gadgets. However GPS satellites aren’t always available, such as when the handset is in a building such as an school, shopping center, or even in a car. That doesn’t mean smartphone locating isn’t available, but it does mean there are other methods of being a tracker.
To track a mobile phone involves several primary methods of calculating smartphone position. GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID. All these technologies transform cell phones 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 requires software applications installed on the cell phone in conjunction 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 position phone tracking faster.
Mobile phone GPS is what people commonly think of when considering tracking mobile phones. GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most well known and more accurate technology of tracking. However GPS needs satellites to be in direct line of site of the cell phone.
Sometimes thick cloud cover and thick foliage impedes with signals.
If the handset is in a structure, for example your school, shopping center. Some mobile phones will keep the last known GPS location, others might not.
Another issue with smartphone GPS tracking is the potential of draining 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 location along with battery life.
GPS receivers, whether in a smartphone, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, calculate 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 condition and estimated orbits of all GPS satellites (the almanac). GPS receivers often take a long time to become ready to navigate after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to capturing GPS satellite signals. This delay is sometimes 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 acquire signals and determine initial location faster.
GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled device keeps its last calculated location, the satellites that were in view at the time, the almanac information in memory, and makes an attempt to obtain 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 turned off.
GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled smartphone keeps its last calculated location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in view. It resets and attempts 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 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 deletes all the previous data, and attempts to locate satellites and achieve a GPS lock. This takes longer than other methods because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled device receiver has to try to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.
Assisted GPS, also known as A-GPS or AGPS, improves the performance of standard GPS in mobile phones connected to the cellular network. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the device general position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission.
A-GPS assists location tracking functions of smartphones (and other connected devices) in a couple of ways:
One way is by helping to obtain a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). A-GPS acquires and archivesinformation about satellite positionvia the cell network so the coordinates information does require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
Another way is by assisting position handsets when GPS signals are weak or blocked. As mentioned before 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 calculate 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 viable substitute to GPS smartphone tracking. The position of the handset can be estimated by the cell network cell id, that identifies the cell tower the phone is using. By knowing the position 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 kilometers in lower density areas. This is why location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Nonetheless tracking via CellID still presents a very good alternative.
Another way of determining cell phone 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 estimate location.
To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cellular phone companies must be able to provide authorities with smartphone 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 can obtain accuracy down to less than 10 meters. 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 utilizes triangulation algorithms to determine the location of the handset, its accuracy is proven to be less than than that of GPS. MLS is further impacted by the same issues as GPS in the sense of the interference affecting signal strength and the density of GSM towers to assist in the triangulation effort. In rural areas location accuracy may be off as much as a mile.
It might be critical to consider how GPS location software applications handle the data and controls cell phone 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 usefulness and costs.
Consider that there is a fundamental difference between handset GPS Tracking and Navigation. GPS mobile phone tracking is typically associated with a third-party keeping records of either real-time or historical handset position, while Navigation deals with the smartphone user figuring out how to get from point A to point B.
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Topics: Caribbean Cruise | 1 Comment »
October 14th, 2011 at 10:50 am
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