Tactics for Cellular Telephone Phone GPS Tracking

GPS tracking, mobile GPS and cell phone GPS track software are unquestionably gaining interest from potential customers, cellular telephone companies and program designers. The up-to-date mobile phones provide GPS position functionality to track smartphone location.

To help conform to Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cellular phone companies are required to be able to supply authorities with smartphone latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters. Cell Tower Triangulation will not always meet this condition. For comparison, commercially accessible GPS modules are able to realize accuracy down to less than 10 meters. This is dependent on several factors, as GPS signals tend to be pretty weak and they are influenced by numerous variables. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cellular network provider utilizes triangulation techniques to try to pinpoint the position of the mobile phone, its accuracy is proven to be much worse than that of GPS. MLS is further affected by factors similar to GPS in the sense of the interference impeding signal quality and the density of GSM towers to help in the triangulation calculation. In remote areas location accuracy may be off as much as a mile.

GPS Hot Start refers to whenever the GPS enabled cell phone recalls its last identified position, the satellites that had been in range at the time, and also the almanac data in memory, and makes an attempt to connect to the same satellites and determine a new location based upon the previous data. 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 handset recalls its last calculated location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in view. It resets and makes an attempt to obtain satellite signals and computes a new location. The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites toseek since it saved its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are in range. The Warm Start will take more time compared to Hot Start but not as much as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous information, and attempts to find satellites and complete a GPS lock. This usually takes the longest because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled device receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite signal from any accessible satellites.

To be able to get better GPS lock times cellphone manufacturers and telco operators designed Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the handset basic position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, generally known as A-GPS or AGPS, boosts the performance of standard GPS in mobile phones connected to the cell network. In the US Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use Assisted GPS. This is a method of using the cell network to speed up finding of GPS satellites.

A-GPS assists location tracking performance of mobile phones (and other connected devices) in a couple of ways:

One way will be helping to secure a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and archives information about satellite location using the cellular network so the location data does not need to be downloaded via the satellite.

The second process is by helping position smartphones when GPS signals are weak or blocked. Because GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall structures, and do not pass through building interiors well AGPS uses proximity to cellular towers to calculate location when GPS signals are not available.

When satellite signals are not available, or precision is less important than battery life, making use of Cell-ID is a good substitute to GPS cell phone tracking. The position of the smartphone can be determined by the cell network cell id, which determines the cell tower the smartphone is using. By knowing the position of this tower, you’ll be able to know roughly 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 several miles in lower density zones. This is the reason location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Having said that monitoring via CellID still provides a truly good alternative.

Another way of calculating mobile phone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation employs signal analysis data to determine the time it takes signals traveling from your mobile phone to a minimum of three cell towers to judge location.

Tactics for Cellular Telephone Phone GPS Tracking