Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Facts about Phone Apps for GPS Tracking

GPS tracking, cell phone GPS and mobile phone track programs are drawing curiosity from potential buyers, cellphone businesses and application programmers. The hottest smartphones include GPS location functionality to track phone position.


 Phone Tracking


GPS receivers, irrespective of whether within a smart phone, or perhaps a specific Portable gps tracking system, estimate specific location by precisely timing the signals transmitted by GPS satellites. This critical information involves the moment the message was sent, precise orbital details (technically referred to as the ephemeris), plus the basic system state and determined orbits of all GPS satellites (formally 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 capturing GPS satellite signals. This delay can be caused if the GPS device 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 satellite signals and find initial location more quickly.


GPS Hot Start is the term for when the GPS enabled mobile phone retains its last identified position, the satellites that were in range before, as well as the almanac data in memory, and tries to lock onto the same satellites and compute a brand new location 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 refers to when the GPS enabled handset recalls its last known location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It performs a reset and tries to find satellite signals and computes a new location. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites toseek since it saved its last known location and also the almanac data helps determine which satellites are in range. The Warm Start is going to take more time compared to Hot Start although not as much as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous data, and attempts to find satellites and achieve a GPS lock. This takes more time since there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to try to lock onto a satellite signal from any accessible satellites.


So that you can get improved GPS lock times cellular phone manufacturers and system providers created Assisted GPS technology. This downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the cell phone general location. GPS Receivers can get a quicker lock in exchange for a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, often known as A-GPS or AGPS, enhances the performance of standard GPS in cell phones connected to the cellular network. In America Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use Assisted GPS. This is a means of using the cellular network to speed up acquisition of GPS satellites.


A-GPS assists location tracking performance of mobile phones (and other related devices) in two ways:


One way will be helping to secure a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and stores information concerning the location of satellites utilizing the cell network and so the location details does not require to be downloaded from the the satellite.


A subsequent way is by assisting position devices when GPS signals are weak or impeded. Due to the fact GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well AGPS uses distance to cellular towers to calculate location when GPS signals are not accessible.


In the event that satellite signals are not accessible, or precision is less important than life of the battery, utilizing Cell-ID is a viable substitute to GPS mobile phone tracking. The location of the mobile phone may be calculated by the cellular network cell id, which pinpoints the cell tower the cellphone is using. By having the position of the tower, you’ll be able to know roughly where the handset might be. However, a tower can cover a large area, from a couple of hundred meters, in high populationdensity areas, to several miles in lower density zones. This is why location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Having said that monitoring via CellID still can provide a truly handy substitute.


Another method of formulating smartphone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation employs signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals to travel from your phone to at least three cell towers to calculate position.



Facts about Phone Apps for GPS Tracking

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