If you carry a smartphone then most probably you have a GPS receiver embedded in it. OVI maps in Nokia phones or the Goggle maps pinpoint your location instantly. It gives information on your present location, restaurants near you etc.
A mobile phone network consists of a base station and a tower. Whenever you (your phone) move from one network to another, the base station of the respective network determines the signal strength. The tower transfer the signal from one base station to other depending upon the strength of the signal at a particular base station.
GPS in a smartphone can use two way methods to determine your location. It may scan for nearest towers in the phone’s vicinity. Determining the signal strength, the angle of approach and distance of the phone from the towers a location of the phone can be fixed, but this method is not the actual task of a GPS receiver. A GPS receiver in a smartphone actually scans for three satellites in the sky below which the GPS receiver is present, now a location of the GPS receiver is fixed by determining its location relative to the three satellites. The point where the end point of the waves from these satellites intersects on the surface of the earth is the location of the device. This technique is known as triletaration. Both the method mentioned above are used by smart phones simultaneously for better accuracy of the location.
Read More at How Stuff Works
No comments:
Post a Comment