GPS tracking, cell phone GPS and cell phone track software packages are undoubtedly drawing notice from potential customers, cellular telephone companies and software makers. The most popular mobiles provide GPS location attributes to track mobile phone location.
In order to comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cellular phone companies must be able to deliver authorities with cell phone latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters. Cell Tower Triangulation will not always satisfy this requirement. For comparison, commercially accessible GPS modules can obtain accuracy down to 3-10m. This depends upon several factors, as GPS signals tend to be quite weak and are affected by numerous factors. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cellular network provider utilizes triangulation algorithms to try to pinpoint the location of the device, its accuracy is proven to be less than than that of GPS. MLS is further affected by factors similar to GPS in the sense of the interference impeding signal strength and the density of GSM towers to assist in the triangulation effort. In remote areas position accuracy may be off as much as a mile.
GPS Hot Start means when the GPS enabled mobile phone keeps its last identified location, the satellites that had been in range before, as well as the almanac data in memory, and attempts to connect to the same satellites and determine a fresh position 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 switched off. GPS Warm Start refers to whenever the GPS enabled smartphone remembers its last known location, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It performs a reset and makes an attempt to find satellite signals and computes a new position. The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites toseek since it stored its last known location and also the almanac data helps determine which satellites are in range. The Warm Start will need longer 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 locate satellites and complete a GPS lock. This usually takes longer than other methods since there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite transmission from any accessible satellites.
So as to have better GPS lock times cellular phone manufacturers and system operators created Assisted GPS technology. This downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the cell phone general location. GPS Receivers can get a quicker lock in return for a few kilobytes of data transmission. Assisted GPS, often known as A-GPS or AGPS, enhances the performance of standard GPS in handsets connected to the cellular network. In the United States Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. Which is a method of utilizing the cell network to speed up acquisition 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 get a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). Assisted GPS gets and archives information regarding the location of satellites via the cell network and so the position information does not require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
The other technique is by helping position handsets when GPS signals are weak or blocked. Due to the fact GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall structures, and do not pass through building interiors well AGPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to estimate position when GPS signals are not readily available.
In the event that satellite signals are not accessible, or precision is less important than life of the battery, making use of Cell-ID is a viable substitute to GPS cell phone location. The location of the device can be calculated by the cell network cell id, that recognizes the cell tower the smartphone is using. By understanding the position of the tower, you’ll be able to know approximately where the cell phone might be. Still, a tower can cover a large area, from a few hundred meters, in high populationdensity regions, to a few miles in lower density areas. This is the reason location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Even so tracking from CellID still offers quite a helpful alternative.
Another method of determining smartphone position is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation utilizes signal analysis data to compute the time it takes signals traveling from your telephone to no less than 3 cell towers to judge location.