Advance in GPS System: Working Principle, Future Scope, Advantages and Disadvantages

ADVANCE IN GPS SYSTEM
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:
Figure 1. Global Positioning System
(Gps.gov, 2018)

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Introduction:
This assignment mainly focuses on advance in GPS system. Previously tracking a device
was difficult however, with the advancement of technology and discovery of the GPS system,
tracing a device has become significantly easy (Salvemini, 2015). Nowadays mostly all
electronic devices like mobile phones has a GPS system installed in it. The signals that they
receive from the GPS satellites help them to calculate the distance from them and finally locate
their position on Earth. The system is advancing day by day and NASA is now planning to
replace all the geostationary satellites with GPS satellites. They find application in our daily life.
Most of the people now utilize the online booking service of cabs. They use GPS system to
locate position of the person who has booked the cab. The following paragraphs will describe in
details the working principle of the technology, the future scope followed by advantages and
disadvantages of the system.
GPS technology:
The GPS technology also known as the Global Positioning System is the result of
technology advancement that helps the system to locate a user, using a particular band of radio
frequency. The speed, location and time of the user can be traced with high level of accuracy. It
is mainly composed of a group of satellites revolving around the Earth owned by the United
States government. The U.S. Department of Defense first used the GPS system. It is also known
as NavStar because it is Global navigation satellite system. The whole system consists of mainly
three components: GPS satellite that sends signal to the receiver via space, the GPS receiver that
receives the signal and the complex computer software that helps to decode the data and locate
the receiver accurately.
Working Principle:
ADVANCE IN GPS SYSTEM

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Global Positioning System works on the principle of signal interception. For locating a
GPS receiver, the system utilizes at least four satellites at a time that sends information about its
position and time at regular intervals. These signals travelling at the speed of light are then
intercepted by the receiver that calculates the distance of each satellites depending on the time
taken by the signals to reach the receiver. Once the receiver has all these information, the GPS
system can track1 the location of the receiver.
Another method by which GPS works is trilateration. Suppose three satellites are
observing a GPS receiver on the Earth surface. If the distance from satellite A is known then the
user must be somewhere within the covering area of the satellite. The same method is applied to
other two satellites, satellite B and satellite C. From the intersection point of covering area of the
satellites, the user can be located accurately. The following diagram will explain trilateration
clearly.
The number of satellites that are observing a particular GPS receiver is directly
proportional to accuracy. More the number of satellites more is the accuracy. The GPS tracking
system has number of applications. One of the main application is the tracking of a cell phone.
How it is used now or will be used in the future
GPS tracking system for Mobile phones:
The tracking system for mobile phone utilizes the cell phone company that sends
processed data to the mobile phone. In the beginning, the cell phone company receives some
information from the cell phone with the help of cellular towers that can hear the cell phone, then
switches from cellular back to phone to receive raw information (Chang and Fang, 2014). The
phone then sends this raw data back to the phone company that processes the data and finally
sends the location to cell phone.
1 To follow the movements of a device in order to know the whereabouts of it
ADVANCE IN GPS SYSTEM