Mobile communications means more than just placing a phone call while moving.    The newest cell phones have GPS locator features to track phone location.   These features, along with others such as SMS texting, web access and the ability to utilize other applications make smartphones great gadgets.  However GPS satellites aren’t always available, such as when the phone is in a building such as an office, mall, or even when driving.  That doesn’t mean smartphone tracking isn’t possible, but it does mean there are other methods of being a tracker.

To track a mobile phone involves several primary methods of formulating  cell phone position.  GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID.   All these technologies transform smartphones 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 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 techniques to make best use of available data and to make location mobile phone tracking faster.  

Mobile phone GPS is what people usually think of when considering tracking mobile phones.   GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most common and more accurate way of tracking.   But GPS needs satellites to be in direct line of site of the handset. 

It doesn’t work particularly well indoors or in crowded cities. 

If the phone is in a building, for example your school, shopping center.  Some smartphones will keep the last known GPS location, others might not.  

Another thing with handset GPS tracking is the potential of wasting 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 resolution 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 location by precisely timing the signals sent 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 sometimes take a long time to become ready to use after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to finding GPS satellite signals. This slow start is sometimes caused when the GPS device  has been turned off for days or weeks, or has been moved 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 acquire satellite signals and compute initial position more quickly. 

GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled mobile phone  keeps its last calculated position, the satellites that were in view before, the almanac data in memory, and makes an attempt to obtain the same satellites and determine a new position based upon the previous information. 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 cell phone  keeps its last known position, and almanac used, but not which satellites were in view. It performs a reset and makes an attempt  to lock onto satellite signals and calculates a new position. 

The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites tolook for because it kept its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are in range. 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 dumps all the previous data, and attempts to locate satellites and achieve a GPS lock. This takes the longest because there is no known reference information.  The GPS enabled handset   receiver has to try 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 the US  Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use A-GPS. Which is a method of utilizing the cellular network to accelerate finding of GPS satellites.  GPS Receivers can get a faster lock in exchange for a few kilobytes of data transmission.

A-GPS assists location tracking functions of cell phones (and other connected devices) in two ways:

The first way is by helping to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). AGPS acquires and storesinformation about the location of satellitesusing the cell network so the position information does require to be downloaded from the the satellite. 

The next way is by helping position  cell phones when GPS signals are weak or not available.  As discussed above GPS satellite signals may be interfered with by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. A-GPS uses proximity to cellular towers to compute position 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 alternative to GPS cell phone location.  The location of the device can be estimated 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.  But, a tower can cover a huge area, from a few hundred meters, in high density areas, to several miles in lower density areas. This is why location CellID accuracy is lower than GPS accuracy. Nonetheless tracking from CellID still provides a very good alternative.    

Another method of determining  smartphone 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 position.   

To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cell phone companies must be able to provide authorities with cell phone 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 systems can achieve accuracy down to 3-10m.  This depends upon many factors, as GPS signals are often very weak and are affected  by many environmental factors.   With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cell network provider uses triangulation algorithms to try to pinpoint the location of the smartphone, its accuracy is proven to be much worse than that of GPS.  MLS is also affected by the same issues as  GPS in the sense of the barriers impeding signal quality and the density of GSM towers to assist in the triangulation effort.   In rural areas location accuracy may be off as much as a mile. 

It might be important to consider how GPS location software applications handle the data and controls device settings.   Having real time tracking on demand, or preferring to minimize battery use and data transmission should be offered.   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 data is sent to the server affect usefulness and costs. 

Consider that there is a basic difference between handset GPS Tracking and Navigation.  GPS cell phone tracking is usually related to someone maintaining records of either real-time or historical cell phone  location, while Navigation deals with the handset  user determining how to get from point A to point B.

A really great software package that includes remote control of device 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    Cell Phone 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
Cell Phone Tracking .