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The Benefits Of A Real Time GPS Vehicle Tracking System

andybrock | Dec 21, 2009 |

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The advent of Global Positioning System Satellites, satellite mapping, wireless GSM networks and the ability to have streaming data has brought real time GPS vehicle tracking out of science fiction and into reality. All of these technologies, bundled together, provide the business consumer with the opportunity to track his fleet or any owned individual vehicle today.

Some important benefits of a real time GPS vehicle tracking system are:

The ability to track your fleet live as they are being driven
Download vehicle speed, direction, last parked location and the duration of that stop
The opportunity to retrieve archived data of any event involving a particular tracked vehicle
Update vehicle information with one to ten second latency periods

So you ask, 'How does this new technology work?' First of all your vehicle needs a GPS vehicle tracking device installed on it. The device can be a portable unit that has its own battery or a permanently installed unit that is hidden from view. While the vehicle is being driven, the GPS vehicle tracking system performs its operations transmitting its location instantly back to the servers of the tracking company by way of a wireless Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications network.

The thinking behind real time vehicle GPS tracking has been linked internationally with RTLS or Real-time locating systems, which refer to systems that collect location information in a passive or active method. In order for this to function, the location of vehicles with GPS vehicle tracking installed must be determined by a central processor or by a mobile computing facility.

There are a variety of concepts used to provide real time locating. The usual methods can be:

Infrared (IR)
Low-frequency Signpost Identification
Radio Beacon
Ultrasonic Ranging (US-RTLS)
Ultrasound Identification (US-ID)
Bluetooth
Bivalent Systems
Active Radio Frequency Identification (Active RFID)
Active Radio Frequency Identification – Infrared Hybrid (Active RFID-IR)
Clustering in noisy ambience
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN, Wi-Fi)
Optical Locating
Semi-Active Radio Frequency Identification (semi-active RFID)
Ultrawide Band (UWB)

Real time GPS vehicle tracking uses the following physical methodologies:

Near-field electromagnetic ranging (NFER)
Time of Flight (ToF)
Received Channel Power Indicator (RCPI)
Received Signal Strength indication (RSSI)
Line-of-sight (LoS)
Angle of Arrival (AoA)
Time Difference of Arrival (TdoA)
Time of Arrival (ToA)
Symmetrical Double Sided – Two Way Ranging (SDS-TWR)

Since the advent of cellular wireless or sometimes better known as satellite communications, real time vehicle tracking has exploded into the world of public and private surveillance. What at one time might have cost thousands of dollars to enact and involve countless hours to coordinate now is reduced to just a few dollars per hour and, in some cases, even a few cents. Keeping track of your fleet or to have the satisfaction that if your car becomes stolen it can be tracked down quickly is the hallmark of real time GPS vehicle tracking today.