Across the country and around the world, GPS tracking, mobile GPS and cell phone tracking software are attracting attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers.   The most recent mobiles include GPS position features to track phone location.   These features, and others such as text messaging, internet access and the capability to utilize other software make cell phones great gadgets.  However GPS satellites aren’t always available, for example when the handset is in a building such as an school, shopping center, or even when driving.  That doesn’t mean cell phone tracking isn’t possible, but it does mean there are other ways of being a locator.

To track a cell phone involves several primary ways of formulating  smartphone location.  GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID.   All these technologies convert mobile 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 needs software programs installed on the cell phone  in conjunction with GPS hardware.  Triangulation and CellID are Network Based as they use the equipment and information from the cellular provider.  Hybrid systems combine methods to make best use of available data and to make position cell tracking faster.  

GPS on cell phones is what people usually think of when looking at locating smartphones.   GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most well known and more accurate method of tracking.   However GPS requires satellites to be in direct line of site of the smartphone. 

Sometimes heavy cloud cover and dense trees interferes with signals. 

If the handset is in a building, for example your office, shopping center.  Some cell phones will keep the last known GPS location, others might not.  

Another thing with smartphone GPS tracking is the potential of battery drain.  It is important to be able to remotely adjust how often of taking GPS position.  Choosing real-time or periodic sampling affects both the resolution of determining location as well as how long the battery will last.  

GPS receivers, whether in a cell phone, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, determine location 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 health and rough orbits of all GPS satellites (the almanac).  GPS receivers often take a long time to become ready to navigate after it's turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to capturing GPS satellite signals. This slow start can be caused when the GPS device  has been turned off for days or weeks, or has been transported a significant distance while unused 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 satellite signals and determine initial location more quickly. 

GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled smartphone  remembers its last known location, the satellites that were in range at the time, the almanac data in memory, and tries to lock onto the same satellites and calculate 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 turned off. 

GPS Warm Start is when the GPS enabled device  recalls its last known position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in range. It resets and attempts  to find 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 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 dumps all the previous data, and attempts to locate satellites and accomplish a GPS lock. This takes more time because there is no known reference information.  The GPS enabled smartphone   receiver has to attempt to lock onto a satellite signal from any available satellites. 

In order to have better GPS lock times cellular manufacturers and telco operators developed Assisted GPS technology.   In America  Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use A-GPS. Which is a method of using the cell network to speed up finding 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 cell phones (and other connected devices) in two ways:

One way is by helping to obtain a faster "time to first fix" (TTFF). Assisted GPS acquires and archivesinformation about satellite locationusing the cell network so the position information does need to be downloaded via the satellite. 

The next way is by assisting position  cell phones when GPS signals are weak or impeded.  As discussed above GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. Assisted GPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to estimate 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 viable substitute to GPS cell phone tracking.  The position of the device can be computed by the cell network cell id, which identifies the cell tower the phone is connected to.   By knowing the location of this tower, then you can know approximately where the device  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 tracking via CellID still presents a very good substitute.    

Another way of formulating  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 determine location.   

To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cell phone companies must be able to provide authorities with handset latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 50 to 300 meters.   Cell Tower Triangulation doesn’t always meet this requirement.  By way of comparison commercially available GPS systems can obtain accuracy down to less than 10 meters.  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 cell network provider utilizes triangulation techniques to determine the location of the cell phone, its accuracy is proven to be much worse than that of GPS.  MLS is also impacted by factors similar to  GPS in the sense of the barriers impeding signal quality 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. 

It might be critical to consider how GPS location software applications handle the data and controls smartphone settings.   Having real time tracking on demand, or preferring to minimize battery use and data transmission should be a minimum requirement.   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 over the Internet.  How often GPS samples are taken and how often and by what method the data is sent to the server affect effectiveness and costs. 

Keep in mind that there is a fundamental difference between mobile phone GPS Tracking and Navigation.  GPS mobile phone tracking is usually related to someone keeping records of either real-time or historical mobile phone  position, while Navigation deals with the mobile phone  user figuring out how to get from point A to point B.

A really great software package that includes remote control of cell phone settings, and combines Mobile Phone Tracking  with SMS text message, Call Log,  MMS multi-media message monitoring, and a web account for storage and review is PhoneBeagle.  

Follow this link if you are interested in    Mobile Monitoring Software  compatible with BlackBerry  and  Android  Smartphones, used or Parental Monitoring and Small Business Employee Monitoring .  

Visit this link for more information regarding the latest software for
Mobile GPS .