Cell tracking, mobile GPS and mobile phone track software programs are attracting focus from consumers, cellphone businesses and application makers. The newest smartphones integrate GPS position attributes to track mobile phone position.
To comply with Federal Communications Commission rules, cell phone companies must be able to give authorities with device latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters. Cell Tower Triangulation isn’t going to always meet this requirement. For comparison, commercially accessible GPS systems will be able to acquire precision right down to 3-10m. This is dependent upon a lot of factors, as GPS signals are often particularly weak and they are influenced by numerous factors. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cell network provider uses triangulation algorithms to determine the position of the mobile phone, its accuracy is proven to be much worse than that of GPS. MLS is also impacted by the same issues as GPS in the sense of the barriers affecting signal quality and the density of GSM towers to help in the triangulation effort. In remote areas position accuracy may be off as much as a mile.
GPS Hot Start means whenever the GPS enabled smartphone remembers its last identified location, the satellites that had been in view at the time, as well as the almanac data in memory, and makes an attempt to connect to the same satellites and compute a brand new position based upon the previous information. This is generally the quickest GPS lock but Hot Start only works if the phone is generally in the same location as when the GPS was last turned off. GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled cell phone keeps its last calculated location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and tries to find satellite signals and calculates a brand new location. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites tolook for because it stored its last known location and also the almanac data helps determine which satellites are within view. The Warm Start will take more time than the Hot Start although not as much as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous information, and tries to find satellites and complete a GPS lock. This will take more time because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled device receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite transmission from any available satellites.
In order to get better GPS lock times cell phone manufacturers and network providers developed Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris helping triangulate the cell phone basic location. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock in return for a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, also called A-GPS or AGPS, enhances the performance of standard GPS in mobile phones connected to the cellular network. In the US Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. Which is a method of utilizing the cell network to speed up finding of GPS satellites.
A-GPS improves location tracking functions of smartphones (and also other related devices) in a couple of ways:
One way will be assisting to acquire a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and stores information in relation to the location of satellites using the cell network so the location data does not need to be downloaded via the satellite.
The other method is by assisting position cell phones when GPS signals are weak or not available. Because GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well A-GPS utilizes distance to cellular towers to approximate position when GPS signals are not accessible.
When satellite signals are not available, or accuracy is less important than battery life, employing Cell-ID is a viable substitute to GPS mobile phone tracking. The position of the cell phone may be calculated by the cellular network cell id, which identifies the cell tower the smartphone is using. By having the location of the tower, then you can know approximately the spot where the device might be. Nonetheless, a tower can cover a massive area, from a couple of hundred meters, in higher populationdensity locations, to a few miles in lower density zones. This is the reason location CellID precision is less than than GPS accuracy. Having said that location via CellID still presents quite a good alternative.
Another method of determining cell phone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation uses signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals traveling from the smartphone to at least 3 cell towers to estimate location.
Information about Mobile Phone Apps for GPS Monitoring
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