Various GPS start techniques greatly influence how much time will be necessary to produce position.
GPS Hot Start means whenever the GPS enabled smartphone remembers its last known position, the satellites that had been in view at the time, and also the almanac data in memory, and attempts to obtain the same satellites and determine a brand new location based upon the previous data. 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 turned off.
GPS Warm Start is the term for whenever the GPS enabled device recalls its last known position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and tries to connect to satellite signals and calculates a brand new position. The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites tolook for since it saved its last known location and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are visible in the sky. The Warm Start is going to take longer compared to Hot Start but not as much as a Cold Start.
With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous data, and tries to locate satellites and obtain a GPS lock. This usually takes more time since there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled smartphone receiver must attempt to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.
So that you can have better GPS lock times (the timeframe it needs to lock onto an orbiting GPS Satellite signal) cellular phone manufacturers and telco providers designed Assisted GPS technology. It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the cell phone general position. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission.
Assisted GPS, also referred to as A-GPS or AGPS, improves the performance of standard GPS in devices connected to the cell network. In the US Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. Which is a means of using the cellular network to accelerate finding of GPS satellites. A-GPS assists location tracking performance of mobile phones (along with other connected devices) in a couple of ways:
One method will be helping to acquire a faster “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS receives and archives data regarding satellite position utilizing the cell network so the location information does not require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
Another technique is by helping locate mobile phones when GPS signals are weak or impeded. Because GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall structures, and do not go through building interiors well A-GPS utilizes distance to cellular towers to calculate location when GPS signals are not accessible.