Smartphone GPS Tracking Fundamentals

Mobile Phone GPS Tracking Guide – GPS Technological TopicsUnder FCC rules for emergencies (e911) GPS information, is transmitted only during an emergency 911 call. Cell phones may have GPS and the device may “know” exactlyits position, but it is unable to “tell” anyone else where it is, until connected to a cellular network. In order to comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cellular phone companies must be in a position to provide authorities with mobile phone latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters. Cell Tower Triangulation is not going to always satisfy this condition. By way of evaluation, commercially accessible GPS modules are able to acquire accuracy down to less than 10 meters. This depends upon numerous factors, as GPS signals are often rather weak and they are impacted by many variables. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cellular network provider utilizes triangulation techniques to compute the location of the handset, its accuracy is proven to be less than than that of GPS. MLS is also impacted by the same issues as GPS in the sense of the interference 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. GPS receivers, whether or not within a mobile phone, or perhaps a dedicated Portable gps tracking system, determine specific location by way of precisely timing the signals transferred by GPS satellites. This information consists of the time the message was transmitted, highly accurate orbital information (technically referenced as the ephemeris), plus the general system condition and believed orbits of all GPS satellites (technically referenced as the almanac). GPS receivers sometimes take a long time to become ready to use after it’s turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to finding GPS satellite signals. This delay is sometimes caused when the GPS smartphone has been unused for days or weeks, or has been transported a significant distance while turned off. 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 position more quickly.

Smartphone GPS Tracking Fundamentals