Phone Tracker Basics

Cell tracking, mobile GPS and mobile phone tracker software programs are unquestionably drawing attention from potential buyers, cell phone companies and software designers. The latest mobiles feature GPS position capabilities to track cell phone position.

GPS receivers, whether inside a handset, or simply a dedicated Portable gps tracking system, determine location by accurately timing the signals sent by GPS satellites. This information contains the moment the message was transmitted, accurate orbital information (technically referred to as the ephemeris), and also the general system condition and estimated orbits of all GPS satellites (formally referenced as the almanac). GPS receivers sometimes take a long time 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 is sometimes caused if the GPS device has been turned off 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 satellite signals and find initial position more quickly.

GPS Hot Start is the term for whenever the GPS enabled handset retains its last identified location, the satellites that were in range before, as well as the almanac data in memory, and makes an attempt to obtain the same satellites and compute a brand new position based upon the previous information. 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 the term for when the GPS enabled device remembers its last known location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It performs a reset and tries to lock onto satellite signals and computes a whole new location. The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites tolook for since it kept its last known position and the almanac data helps determine which satellites are within view. The Warm Start is going to take longer than the Hot Start although not as long as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous information, and tries to locate satellites and complete a GPS lock. This normally takes the longest because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled smartphone receiver must attempt to lock onto a satellite transmission from any available satellites.

So that you can get improved GPS lock times mobile phone manufacturers and system operators introduced Assisted GPS technology. This downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the handset general location. GPS Receivers will get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, generally known as A-GPS or AGPS, improves the performance of normal GPS in mobile phones connected to the cell network. In America Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use Assisted GPS. This is a means of utilizing the cellular network to speed up finding of GPS satellites.

A-GPS improves location tracking functions of smartphones (and also other connected devices) in two ways:

The first way is by helping to obtain a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). Assisted GPS acquires and stores information in relation to satellite location using the cellular network and so the coordinates data does not need to be downloaded from the the satellite.

A subsequent approach is by assisting locate 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 go through building interiors well AGPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to estimate location when GPS signals are not accessible.

If satellite signals are not available, or precision is less important than battery life, making use of Cell-ID is a good substitute to GPS mobile phone tracking. The position of the mobile phone might be estimated by the cell network cell id, that identifies the cell tower the smartphone is connected to. By having the position of this tower, you may know roughly the spot where the handset is. Nonetheless, a tower can cover a large area, from a few hundred meters, in higher populationdensity locations, to several kilometers in lower density regions. For this reason location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Even so monitoring using CellID still supplies a very good substitute.

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

Phone Tracker Basics