Global Positioning System or GPS in phones

December 1, 2007

One of the most up-to-date technologies in phones that are very useful and effective is the GPS technology. If you are on your way and realize that you are lost, what will you do? Naturally you will call up the person to whom you are heading to and ask for directions. But think of a situation when you are not sure about your exact position and you do not know where you are stuck. That is a tough situation to handle and now you do not have to panic as technology has advanced a lot.

A phone integrated with a GPS receiver can help you in such a situation. They work on the given software and network and if properly installed, they will let you know where you are and which direction to head towards and all the other necessary information you want. Let us see how it exactly works on phones and what it is all about.

Let us start by getting to know about the phone we use. It is like a sophisticated two way radio and it’s the way that it works makes it similar to a radio. The phone or to be more precise the mobile phones we use have low power transmitters and it is with this they communicate to the nearest available tower. As we travel, the base station does the monitoring of our phone and makes out the signals available connecting it to the nearest mobile. Talking about GPS Receiver let us look and learn how useful they are when available on our phones.

The GPS receivers just like mobile phones use radio waves but they do not rely on any towers but on satellites that orbit the earth. There are 27 in all and 3 of them serve as back up to the rest of the 24 in case one of them fails. A GPS receiver locates to 3 satellites above you and finds how you are related to those satellites. It then using its tri-lateration determines your position. A little bit of mathematics is included in between to make understand its working easier. The GPS receiver makes a sphere around the three satellites and this drawing intersects at 2 points one in the space and another on the ground which determines the location of yours. The GPS receiver just like a mobile phone needs a clear space to locate the satellite to find its location and hence buildings and dense tree covers are not good for their proper working.

GPS phones are the ones that have GPS receiving capability in-built in them which help in this. The phones that do not have in-built GPS capability can be connected to a server that uses some techniques to find out the location. By dialling to Public Safety Answering Point the phone can transmit the location of that person. Most of the latest phones have GPS receiving capabilities in them. The other phones can be connected to GPS receivers through Bluetooth or wires. The phones with GPS receivers follow Java and hence can give step by step information on the current location and even about the nearest businesses and attractions too. To locate the position the requirements are a GPS phone or a GPS server. A plan that supports both transmission of maps and GPS data and a plan or software that provides the actual location of the phone with the map and directions.

The features that are common in GPS phones are the Local tracking and the Turn by turn directions, Outdoor location Maps Services and other Location based services. Location tracking is of use if one leaves a safe area and a turn by turn direction service is helpful as it comes with display and announcements of the same. This service is charged monthly and has a database of maps as well. The outdoor location service is required when used at hiking, mountain biking and such outdoor activities. The other location based services are useful to find out not so familiar locations and to locate them. Hence it is now common that one is using GPS services but it too has some limitations which can be overcome as the technology has improved a lot.

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