Cell Phone GPS Tracking Basics

Monday , 14, October 2013 Leave a comment

Systems Intended for Emergency Response Can Be Used for Tracking Cell Phones. Cell tracking, mobile GPS and mobile phone tracker software programs are really getting a lot of attention from consumers, phone companies and software creators. The most recent mobiles integrate GPS location capabilities to track cellular phone position.
 Mobile Tracker
GPS receivers, no matter if within a mobile phone, or perhaps a dedicated Portable gps tracking device, calculate location through accurately timing the signals passed on by GPS satellites. This data incorporates the time the message was transmitted, specific orbital details (formally called the ephemeris), and the general system health and determined orbits of all GPS satellites (technically referenced as the almanac). GPS receivers often take longer to become ready to navigate after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to finding GPS satellite signals. This delay can be caused when the GPS device has been turned off for days or weeks, or has been moved 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 capture signals and determine initial position more quickly.
GPS Hot Start describes whenever the GPS enabled handset keeps its last known location, the satellites that were in range at the time, together with the almanac data in memory, and tries to connect to the same satellites and determine a brand new position based upon the previous data. This is almost always the quickest GPS lock but Hot Start only works if the phone is generally in the same location as when the GPS was last switched off. GPS Warm Start refers to whenever the GPS enabled cell phone remembers its last calculated location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in view. It resets and makes an attempt to lock onto satellite signals and computes a fresh location. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites tolook for since it stored its last known position and the almanac data helps determine which satellites are in range. The Warm Start is going to take longer than the Hot Start although not as much as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous data, and tries to locate satellites and accomplish a GPS lock. This will take more time because there is no known reference data. The GPS enabled device receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite transmission from any accessible satellites.
In order to have better GPS lock times cellular phone manufacturers and telco operators created Assisted GPS technology. This downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the smartphone basic position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock in exchange for a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, often known as A-GPS or AGPS, helps the performance of standard GPS in devices connected to the cell network. In America Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use A-GPS. This is a method of using the cell network to speed up acquisition of GPS satellites.
A-GPS improves location tracking functions of cell phones (along with other connected devices) in a couple of ways:
The first method will be assisting to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). A-GPS acquires and archives information regarding the location of satellites utilizing the cellular network so the location details does not require to be downloaded via the satellite.
The next method is by helping position cell phones when GPS signals are weak or not available. Due to the fact GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall structures, and do not penetrate building interiors well AGPS uses distance to cellular towers to calculate location when GPS signals are not available.
When satellite signals are not obtainable, or accuracy and precision is less important than battery life, using Cell-ID is a viable alternative to GPS smartphone tracking. The position of the device might be approximated by the cell network cell id, which pinpoints the cell tower the cellphone is using. By knowing the position of the tower, you may know roughly the location where the device will be. Nonetheless, a tower can cover a large area, from a couple of hundred meters, in high populationdensity areas, to several kilometers in lower density zones. For this reason location CellID precision is lower than GPS accuracy. Nevertheless monitoring from CellID still gives you a very handy substitute.
Another method of formulating mobile phone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation employs signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals traveling from your cellphone to at least three cell towers to calculate position.