GPS Trackers are one of the most affordable car security solutions as well as a business aid. These small devices are used to track and monitor vehicles and things that need additional security. The trackers can do more when attached to the cars other than providing live location. It can set virtual boundaries, send speeding alerts, and detect vibrations. it is really something that everyone should use and enjoy the benefits because of the size of the device and the tasks they perform. It is considered as a resource that can monitor the assets on the field in a business point of view. These trackers are found to be of great use for business involving transportation such as taxi service and delivery network. A fleet of taxis can be tracked using one single computer application.

How GPS Tracker works

There are so many manufacturers for GPS tracker devices and the functionality of each device varies accordingly. The prime focus of GPS tracker is to provide live tracking to the user. Everything else was an add-on feature in these devices. So, to explain how GPS trackers work, first we must explain how live tracking works.

There are 3 parts in a GPS Tracker.

1. GPS receiver and integrated program console
2. The network adapter
3. The Web application

In a GPS tracker, GPS receiver receives the signal from satellites. It then calculates the location on the map using the help of a microchip processor. Then the network adapter transfers the output coordinates from microchip to the web server. Further visualisation and computing were done at the server level and the final output was displayed on the user screen.

GPS receiver and integrated program console

GPS receiver is responsible for connecting the tracker device with the GPS satellites in space. This device receives the incoming signals from satellites. It requires the signals from at least 4 satellites to locate the position of the GPS receiver on earth, . There are 32 GPS satellites to cover the entire earth. The accuracy of the GPS location mapping is increases when the GPS receiver get signal from more than 4 satellites.

The program console is a microchip that act as a mother board to perform communication between different components in a GPS tracker. It acts as a base for performing computational tasks and exchange of resulting output between components in a GPS tracker. It is also responsible for coordinated working among the components connected.

The network adapter

The network adapter is helping the GPS tracker to send the data from the tracking device to the servers with the help of the internet. It holds sim cards that connects the GPS tracker to the cloud server. The data include coordinates of the current positions and data from other components. These informations are being transferred instantly to the servers so that the user can analyse it in real time.
In fact, these data transfers are so fast, and it gets updated within nanoseconds thus helping us to do live tracking.

The Web application

The web application helps us to visualise the data from the GPS tracker for better understanding. It is stored in secure servers so that authorised people can only see it on their mobile phone or desktop. The data from the GPS trackers are carefully processed and displayed on the application dashboards. we can draw useful inference from it.

For businesses, the dashboards on a GPS tracker device help to understand the asset allocation as well as the running costs.

The working of a GPS Tracker – Step by Step

The systematic working procedure of GPS Tracker is as follows. Once the GPS tracker is attached to the car, it tries to capture the signals from the satellite’s networks. As discussed earlier the program console then finds the distance between the GPS receiver and the satellites using the time required to receive the signal and speed of the signal. These distances from different satellites can be further used to intercept the location on earth. All these computations are happening in fraction of seconds so there won’t be any delay for the calculation to take place.

Once the location is identified, the car tracking device then tries to send the data to the end user with the help of the internet. For this the GPS tracker is enabled with network adapters. Usually, an M2M sim card performs the job well irrespective of the country. That means one sim card can be used in all the countries without any additional cost. The data from the GPS tracker first logged and processed in servers and it then radially made available to the user devices in a much more comprehensive way.

GPS Tracker for Fleet Management

GPS tracker can be used for fleet management. Unlike tracking a single car, fleet management requires strong computational and data transfer speed. The advantage of fleet management using GPS tracker is that it only required a single application interface to manage all the GPS trackers on different vehicles.

The fleet management opens so many additional options to the customer. Using the Finder portal, the user can easily find out the nearby devices. The heat map on the application tells us about the location in which the vehicle spends most of the time.