Solutions Designed for Emergency Response Can Be Employed for Keeping Track of Your Spouse. GPS tracking, mobile GPS and mobile phone tracking software programs are really gaining notice from consumers, cell phone companies and program developers. The newest smartphones integrate GPS position capabilities to track mobile phone position.
GPS receivers, whether within a phone, or a specific Gps tracking device, calculate specific location through process of accurately timing the signals transmitted by GPS satellites. This critical information consists of the time the message was sent, accurate orbital details (formally called the ephemeris), and the overall system status and estimated orbits of all GPS satellites (technically referred to as the almanac). GPS receivers often take longer to become ready to navigate after it’s 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 unused 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 location faster.
GPS Hot Start describes when the GPS enabled smartphone keeps its last calculated position, the satellites which were in view at the time, as well as the almanac information in memory, and makes an attempt to obtain the same satellites and compute a 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 switched off. GPS Warm Start is the term for when the GPS enabled smartphone recalls its last calculated location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and makes an attempt to obtain satellite signals and computes the latest location. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites tolook for because it saved its last known location and also the almanac data helps determine which satellites are within view. The Warm Start will need more time compared to Hot Start but not as much as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous information, and tries to locate satellites and accomplish a GPS lock. This takes longer than other methods since there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled device receiver must try to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.
So that you can have better GPS lock times cell phone manufacturers and network providers introduced Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris helping triangulate the mobile phone basic position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, often known as A-GPS or AGPS, helps the performance of normal GPS in mobile phones connected to the cell network. In America Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use A-GPS. Which is a means of using the cellular network to accelerate acquisition of GPS satellites.
A-GPS assists location tracking functions of cell phones (and other related devices) in a couple of ways:
The first way will be assisting to obtain a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). A-GPS acquires and stores information concerning the location of satellites using the cellular network so the coordinates information does not require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
The other technique is by helping position mobile phones when GPS signals are weak or blocked. Because GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not pass through building interiors well AGPS makes use of proximity to cellular towers to compute location when GPS signals are not accessible.
If satellite signals are not obtainable, or accuracy is less important than battery life, applying Cell-ID is a useful alternative to GPS mobile phone location. The location of the handset can be determined by the cell network cell id, which pinpoints the cell tower the cellphone is connected to. By having the location of the tower, then you can know approximately the place that the handset will be. Still, a tower can cover an enormous area, from a few hundred meters, in higher populationdensity zones, to several kilometers in lower density regions. For this reason location CellID accuracy is less than than GPS accuracy. Nonetheless location via CellID still offers quite a helpful substitute.
Another method of determining mobile phone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation utilizes signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals to travel from the telephone to at least 3 cell towers to determine location.