Cell tracking, mobile GPS and mobile phone tracker applications are unquestionably drawing attention from potential customers, cellphone businesses and software designers. The current smartphones have GPS locator attributes to track phone position.
GPS receivers, whether or not inside a smart phone, or a specific Portable gps tracking system, determine location by precisely timing the signals transferred by GPS satellites. This data includes the moment the message was sent, accurate orbital details (technically referred to as the ephemeris), as well as the basic system state and projected orbits of all GPS satellites (formally referenced as the almanac). GPS receivers sometimes take longer to become ready to navigate after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to capturing GPS satellite signals. This delay is sometimes caused when the GPS mobile phone has been unused for days or weeks, or has been moved a significant 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 location faster.
GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled device keeps its last known position, the satellites that were in view at the time, and also the almanac data in memory, and tries to connect to the same satellites and determine a brand new location based upon the previous data. This is usually 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 smartphone recalls its last calculated position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in view. It performs a reset and tries to connect to satellite signals and calculates a brand new location. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites tolook for since it saved its last known position and also the almanac data helps identify which satellites are visible in the sky. The Warm Start will take longer than the Hot Start but not as long as a Cold Start. With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous data, and tries to find satellites and complete a GPS lock. This will take the longest because there is no known reference data. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite transmission from any available satellites.
To be able to get improved GPS lock times cellular manufacturers and network providers created Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris helping triangulate the cell phone general location. GPS Receivers can get a quicker lock in exchange for 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. This is a method of utilizing the cellular network to accelerate finding of GPS satellites.
A-GPS improves location tracking functions of smartphones (and other connected devices) in a couple of ways:
The first way is by assisting to secure a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS receives and stores data about satellite location utilizing the cellular network and so the coordinates data does not need to be downloaded via the satellite.
The next method is by helping position devices when GPS signals are weak or impeded. Since GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall structures, and do not pass through building interiors well Assisted GPS makes use of proximity to cellular towers to approximate position when GPS signals are not readily available.
If satellite signals are not readily available, or precision is less important than life of the battery, applying Cell-ID is a good alternative to GPS smartphone location. The position of the handset can be determined by the cell network cell id, that pinpoints the cell tower the smartphone is connected to. By knowing the location of the tower, you’ll be able to know roughly where the handset will be. However, a tower can cover a huge 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. Nevertheless tracking using CellID still offers quite a viable alternative.
Another way of formulating smartphone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation uses signal analysis data to determine the time it takes signals to travel from the mobile phone to a minimum of three cell towers to determine location.