Posts Tagged ‘parental monitoring’

29 March

The Relationship between Short Message System (SMS) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and the Advancement Toward Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)

SMS Text Messaging is widely popular, and new technology that increases cell phone bandwidth will make Multimedia Messages the new preferred communications method.

Sending SMS messages, technically defined as Short Message System (SMS), but typically referred to as “texting”, is a uncomplicated, easy, and handy method to communicate to and from mobile phones.  Not just a very good system for people to keep in touch, SMS can be a sensible manner for software programs to exchange simple messages, and even setup instructions, to and from  smartphones.  text messages doesn’t require a direct connection between cell phones; the communications infrastructure for the process is already in place, and it works across most cellular networks. One feature of SMS messaging that makes it particularly practical for mobile software programs is that it uses smartphone fixed identity, the phone number. This aspect gives a unique benefit over other technologies that use IP addresses because a cell phone IP address will vary depending on current network.

Short Message Service (SMS) is a communication service component of the GSM mobile communication system.  It utilizes uniform communications rules that allow incoming and outgoing short text messages between mobiles. SMS texting is the most widely used data application in the world, with about 2.4 billion active users, or three quarters of all cell phone subscribers.

SMS as used on modern cell phones was originally included as part of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) series of standards in 1985  as a system of transferring messages of up to 160 characters, to and from GSM mobile handsets.  Since then service support has extended to comprise other mobile technology such as ANSI CDMA networks and Digital AMPS, as well as satellite and landline networks.  The majority of SMS messages are mobile-to-mobile text messages, though the standard supports other kinds of broadcast messaging as well.  Computer to mobile phone SMS texting capabilities are also growing rapidly.

Global System for Mobile Communications was originally named Groupe Spécial Mobile.  It is the most popular standard for mobile telephone systems in the world. The GSM Association, the promoting trade organization of mobile phone operators and manufacturers, estimates that approximately 80% of the global mobile market uses the standard.  GSM is enjoyed by over 3 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories.  Its pervasiveness  enables international roaming arrangements between mobile phone network providers, providing subscribers the benefit of their smartphones in many parts of the world.  GSM differs from its predecessor technologies in that both signaling and speech channels are digital.  This means GSM is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system.  Additionally, this  eases the wide-spread deployment of data communication programs.

The pervasiveness of GSM implementation has been a benefit for consumers that are given the option to roam and switch carriers without needing to replace their mobile phones, and also to operators, who can choose equipment from many equipment suppliers. GSM is credited with pioneering affordable deployment of SMS, which is now supported on other mobile phone standards.

Recent versions of the standard work with the original GSM system.  Release ’97 of the standard upgraded to packet data capabilities using General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Release ’99 launched high speed data transmission by means of Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE).

General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data service available to users of the 2G and 3G GSM. In 2G systems.  GPRS data transfer is typically charged per megabyte of traffictransferred, while data communication using traditional circuit switching is charged per unit of connection time, without consideration of whether or not the subscriber actually is transmitting or if it is idle. GPRS is a best-effort packet switched service, as opposed to circuit switching, that has assured quality of service during the connection for non-mobile users.

2G cellular systems combined with GPRS are often described as 2.5G.  2.5G is a technology bridge between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of mobile telephony. It provides moderate-speed data transfer, by using unused time division multiple access (TDMA) channels. Originally there was some thought to extend GPRS to cover other standards, however these networks are converting to the GSM standard.   GPRS is integrated into GSM Release 97 and newer releases.

GPRS was created as a GSM reaction to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet switched cellular technology.  Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) was a wide-area mobile data service which used unused bandwidth normally used by AMPS mobile phones.  It was discontinued in conjunction with the discontinuation of the parent AMPS service.
CDPD was developed in the early 1990’s, and was seen as a future technology. But, it had competition from existing slower but less expensive Mobitex and DataTac systems.  CDPD never earned general acceptance before newer, faster standards such as GPRS gained common acceptance and started dominating.

For consumers CDPD had very limited offerings.  AT&T Wireless initially offered the technology in the America under the brandname PocketNet, one of the very first consumer wireless web service offers. Cingular Wireless later offered CDPD under the Wireless Internet brand (as opposed to Wireless Internet Express, Cingular Wireless GPRS/EDGE data). AT&T Wireless PocketNet failed as a product launch.  But, CDPD was used  by a number of enterprise and government networks.  It was especially successful as a first-generation wireless data solution for telemetry devices (machine to machine communications) and for public safety mobile data terminals.

Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) (also called Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), or IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC), and Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) is a backward-compatible digital mobile phone technology that supplies better data transmission rates on top of standard GSM.  EDGE is considered a 3G radio technology.  EDGE delivers  more than three-fold improvement in both the capacity and performance of GSM/GPRS networks by using sophisticated techniques of coding and transmitting data, that produce higher bit-rates per radio channel.  EDGE delivers broadband performance and supports high bandwidth data applications such as Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

A very interesting software program that uses the connectivity between the cell phone  and the internet to capture and archive MMS Multi-Media Messages, GPS location,  SMS messages, and Call Event Logs is PhoneBeagle Mobile Monitoring.  Follow this link if you are interested in    Cell Phone Monitoring Software that works with with BlackBerry  and  Android  Smartphones,.    Visit this link for more information regarding the latest software for  Parental Monitoring and Employee Monitoring of Mobile Phones .

25 March

Methods for Phone GPS Tracking and Mobile Location raise the question: Do you really know where they are?

Cell tracking, mobile GPS and cell phone track software are getting a lot of attention from consumers, mobile phone companies and application developers.  Mobile communications means more than just placing a phone call while moving.  The latest mobiles have GPS locator features to track phone location.   These features, along with others such as SMS texting, internet access and the capability to use other applications make cell phones great gadgets.  But GPS satellites aren’t always available, such as when the phone is in a building such as an house, shopping center, or even in a car.  That doesn’t mean cell phone locating isn’t available, but it does mean there are other ways of being a tracker.

To track a mobile phone involves several main ways of calculating  cell phone location.  GPS Global Positioning System-Satellites, Triangulation, and CellID.   All these technologies convert mobile phones 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 programs 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 wireless provider.  Hybrid systems combine techniques to make best use of available data and to make position cell tracking faster.  

Mobile phone GPS is what people commonly think of when looking at tracking smartphones.   GPS (Global Positioning System) using satellites is the most common and more accurate technology of tracking.   However GPS needs satellites to be in direct line of site of the cell phone.  It doesn’t work particularly well indoors or in dense cities.  If the handset is in a structure, for example your office, shopping center, or often riding in a car the signals might not reach the cell phone.   Sometimes thick cloud cover and dense trees impedes with reception.  Some cell phones will keep the last known GPS location, others might not.  

Another thing with smartphone GPS tracking is the potential of wasting the battery.  It is important to be able to remotely adjust the frequency of taking GPS position.  Choosing real-time or periodic sampling affects both the resolution of finding location as well as how long the battery will last.  

GPS receivers, whether in a mobile phone, or a dedicated GPS tracking device, determine location by precisely timing the signals sent by GPS satellites.  This information includes the time the message was transmitted, precise orbital information (the ephemeris), and the general system condition and rough orbits of all GPS satellites (the almanac).  GPS receivers sometimes take a long time to become ready to navigate after being turned on because it must acquire some basic information in addition to capturing GPS satellite signals. This slow start is sometimes caused when the GPS smartphone  has been turned off for days or weeks, or has been moved a far 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 signals and calculate initial location more quickly. 

GPS Hot Start is when the GPS enabled mobile phone  remembers its last calculated position, the satellites that were in view before, the almanac data in memory, and tries to find the same satellites and compute a new position based upon the previous information. This is generally the quickest GPS lock but Hot Start only works if the phone is in the same general area 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 tries  to find satellite signals and calculates a new position. 

The GPS receiver narrows the choice of which satellites toseek because it kept its last known position and the almanac data helps identify which satellites are in range. The Warm Start will take longer than the Hot Start but not as long as a Cold Start. 

With GPS Cold Start, the device dumps all the previous information, 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 attempt 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.  It downloads the ephemeris and helps triangulate the cell phone   general position.  GPS Receivers can get a faster lock in exchange for a few kilobytes of data transmission. 

Assisted GPS, also known as A-GPS or AGPS, improves the performance of standard GPS in handsets connected to the cellular network.   In the United States  Sprint, Nextel, Verizon Wireless, and Alltel all use A-GPS. This is a means of using the cell network to speed up acquisition of GPS satellites.  A-GPS improves location tracking functions of cell phones (and other connected devices) in a couple of ways:

One way is by assisting to obtain a more rapid “time to first fix” (TTFF). Assisted GPS acquires and storesinformation about the location of satellitesusing the cellular network so the coordinates information doesn’t require to be downloaded via the satellite. 

The next way is by assisting locate  handsets when GPS signals are weak or blocked.  As mentioned before GPS satellite signals may be impeded by tall buildings, and do not penetrate building interiors well. A-GPS utilizes proximity to cellular towers to calculate 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 mobile phone location.  The position of the smartphone can be computed by the cellular network cell id, which identifies the cell tower the phone is using.   By knowing the location of this tower, then you can know approximately where the mobile phone  is.  However, a tower can cover a huge area, from a few hundred meters, in high density areas, to several kilometers in lower density areas. This is why location CellID precision is less than than GPS accuracy. Nonetheless tracking via CellID still presents a very good substitute.    

Another method of formulating  cell phone position 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 location.   

To comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines, cell phone companies must be able to provide authorities with smartphone 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 modules are able to achieve accuracy down to 3-10m.  This depends upon many factors, as GPS signals are often very weak and are affected  by many variables.   With Mobile Location Services (MLS), the GSM cell network provider utilizes triangulation techniques to determine the location of the smartphone, its accuracy is proven to be much worse than that of GPS.  MLS is further affected by the same issues as  GPS in the sense of the interference impeding signal strength and the density of GSM towers to assist in the triangulation effort.   In remote areas position accuracy may be off as much as a mile. 

Generally speaking it is a matter of what location tracking system is available, and the need for accuracy.  Hybrid methods are emerging that use various techniques in tandem to provide best available location given available resources.  It may be critical to consider how GPS location software programs handle the data and controls handset settings.   Having real time tracking on demand, or preferring to minimize battery use and data transmission should be expected.  Typically the application determines the location with a GPS receiver and transmits the tracking data to a server through a cellular packet data connection. The data connection to the server is usually made over the Internet.  How often GPS samples are taken and how often and by what method the information is sent to the server impact effectiveness and costs. 

Consider that there is a basic difference between handset GPS Tracking and Navigation.  GPS mobile phone tracking is typically related to a third-party keeping records of either real-time or historical mobile phone  position, while Navigation deals with the smartphone  user determining how to get from point A to point B.

A really great software package that includes remote control of handset settings, and combines Phone GPS 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
GPS Tracking .