Methods for Cell Phone Tracking and Cell Location raise the question: Do you really know where they are?
Across the country and around the world, Cell tracking, cell phone GPS and cell phone GPS track software are getting a lot of attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers. The most recent mobile phones have GPS locator functionality to track phone location. These features, along with others such as SMS texting, internet access and the ability to use other applications make smartphones great gadgets. However GPS satellites aren’t always available, for example when the phone is in a building such as an house, shopping center, or even in a car. That doesn’t mean cell phone locating isn’t available, but it does mean there are other methods of being a tracker.
To track a cell phone involves several primary methods of calculating cell phone location. GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID. All these technologies convert cell phones into mobile tracking devices. These systems can be viewed as Network Based, Handset Based or a Hybrid approach. GPS location is Handset based as it requires software applications installed on the smartphone along with GPS hardware. Triangulation and CellID are Network Based as they use the equipment and data from the cellular provider. Hybrid systems combine methods to make best use of available information and to make position mobile phone tracking faster.
Mobile phone GPS is what people usually think of when considering locating cell phones. GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most popular and more accurate technology of tracking. However GPS needs satellites to be in direct line of site of the handset.
Sometimes thick cloud cover and thick trees impedes with signals.
If the phone is in a building, for example your house, mall. Some smartphones will keep the last known GPS location, others might not.
Another thing with handset GPS location is the potential of draining the battery. It is important to be able to remotely adjust how often of taking GPS position. Selecting real-time or periodic sampling affects both the accuracy of determining position as well as how long the battery will last.
GPS receivers, whether in a handset, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, compute position by precisely timing the signals transmitted by GPS satellites. This data includes the time the message was transmitted, precise orbital information (the ephemeris), and the general system condition and estimated orbits of all GPS satellites (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 is sometimes caused if the GPS device has been turned off for days or weeks, or has been transported 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 acquire signals and compute initial location faster.
GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled mobile phone remembers its last known position, the satellites that were in range before, the almanac data in memory, and attempts to obtain the same satellites and compute a new position 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 switched off.
GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled device remembers its last calculated position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It performs a reset and attempts to lock onto satellite signals and computes a new position.
The GPS receiver has a general idea of which satellites toseek because it stored its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are within view. The Warm Start will take more time than the Hot Start but not as long as a Cold Start.
With GPS Cold Start, the device deletes all the previous data, and attempts to locate satellites and achieve a GPS lock. This takes more time because there is no known reference information. The GPS enabled mobile phone receiver has to try to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites.
In order to have better GPS lock times mobile phone manufacturers and telco operators introduced Assisted GPS technology. In America Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use AGPS. This is a means of utilizing the cell network to speed up acquisition of GPS satellites. GPS Receivers can get a faster lock at the expense of a few kilobytes of data transmission.
A-GPS improves location tracking performance of mobile phones (and other connected devices) in two ways:
One way is by helping to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and storesdata about satellite positionvia the cellular network so the position information does require to be downloaded from the the satellite.
The second way is by helping locate devices when GPS signals are weak or not available. As discussed above GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. A-GPS uses proximity to cellular towers to compute location when GPS signals are not available.
If satellite signals are not available, or accuracy is less important than battery life, using Cell-ID is a useful substitute to GPS mobile phone tracking. The position of the device can be calculated by the cell network cell id, that identifies the cell tower the phone is connected to. By knowing the position of this tower, then you can know approximately where the mobile phone is. However, a tower can cover a huge area, from a few hundred meters, in high population areas, to several miles in lower density areas. This is why location CellID accuracy is less than than GPS accuracy. Nonetheless location using CellID still provides a very useful alternative.
Another way of calculating device location is Triangulation or Mobile Location Services (MLS). Cell Tower Triangulation uses signal analysis data to calculate the time it takes signals to travel from your phone to at least three cell towers to estimate location.
To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cell phone companies must be able to provide authorities with smartphone latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters. Cell Tower Triangulation doesn’t always meet this requirement. For comparison commercially available GPS modules are able to obtain accuracy down to 3-10m. This depends upon many factors, as GPS signals are often very weak and are impacted by many environmental factors. With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cellular network provider utilizes triangulation algorithms to estimate the position of the cell phone, its accuracy is proven to be less than than that of GPS. MLS is also impacted by factors similar to GPS in the sense of the barriers impeding signal strength and the density of GSM towers to help in the triangulation effort. In rural areas location accuracy may be off as much as a mile.
In general it comes down to what location tracking system is available, and the need for accuracy. Hybrid methods are emerging that use various techniques in tandem to provide best available location given available resources. Generally the application determines the location with a GPS receiver and transmits the tracking data to a server through a data connection. The data connection to the server is usually made using the Internet. How often GPS samples are taken and how often and by what method the information is sent to the server affect usefulness and costs.
Keep in mind that there is a basic difference between handset GPS Tracking and Navigation. GPS cell phone tracking is typically related to a third-party keeping records of either real-time or historical mobile phone position, while Navigation deals with the mobile phone user determining how to get from point A to point B.
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