How Global Positioning Systems (GPS) Phones work?

Cell Phone Basics

A cell phone is basically a sophisticated two-way radio. Towers and base stations, arranged into a
network of cells, send and receive radio signals. Cell phones contain low-power transmitters that
let them communicate with the nearest tower.
As you travel, you move from one cell to another, and the base stations monitor the strength of
your phone's signal. As you move toward the edge of one cell, your signal strength diminishes.
At the same time, the base station in the cell you are approaching notices the strength of your
signal increasing. As you move from cell to cell, the towers transfer your signal from one to the
next.
In remote locations, towers may be so far apart that they can't provide a consistent signal. Even
when towers are plentiful, mountains and tall buildings can interrupt their signals. Sometimes
people have a hard time getting clear signals inside buildings, especially in elevators.
Even without a GPS receiver, your cell phone can provide information about your location. A
computer can determine your location based on measurements of your signal, such as:

Its angle of approach to the cell towers

How long it takes the signal to travel to multiple towers

The strength of your signal when it reaches the towers

Since obstacles like trees and buildings can affect how long it takes your signal to travel to a
tower, this method is often less accurate than a GPS measurement.
GPS Receiver Basics
Like a cell phone, a GPS receiver relies on radio waves. But instead of using towers on the
ground, it communicates with satellites that orbit the Earth. There are currently 27 GPS satellites
in orbit -- 24 are in active use and 3 act as a backup in case another satellite fails.
In order to determine your location, a GPS receiver has to determine:

The locations of at least three satellites above you

Where you are in relation to those satellites

The receiver then uses trilateration to determine your exact location. Basically, it draws a
sphere around each of three satellites it can locate. These three spheres intersect in two points -one is in space, and one is on the ground. The point on the ground at which the three spheres
intersect is your location.

To locate itself, a GPS receiver must find the distance to three satellites of known positions
A GPS receiver has to have a clear line of sight to the satellite to operate, so dense tree cover and
buildings can keep it from getting a fix on your location.
GPS receivers and cell phones have a lot in common, and both are very popular. In the next
section, we'll look at some of the features of GPS-enabled cell phones.
WIRELESS-ASSISTED GPS
Some GPS phones use wireless-assisted GPS to determine the user's location. In wirelessassisted systems, the phone uses the orbiting GPS satellites in conjunction with information
about the cell phone's signal. Sometimes called enhanced GPS, wireless-assisted GPS can often
get a fix on the user's location faster than a GPS-only receiver. Some wireless-assisted systems
can work inside buildings, under dense foliage and in city areas where traditional receivers
cannot receive signals. You can learn more about wireless-assisted GPS through Lucent
Technologies
GPS Phones
Nearly all new cell phones sold in America have some GPS receiving capability built in. Those
that don't can connect to a server that uses techniques discussed in the last section to analyze
their signals and determine their location. This allows the phones to transmit a person's location

to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) after dialing 911. But that's all a lot of phones can
do with their GPS.
However, some phones have a complete GPS receiver located in the phone or can connect to one
with wires or through a Bluetooth connection. TheseGPS-enabled phones can understand
programming languages like Java and can provide turn-by-turn directions or information about
nearby businesses and attractions. Others can work like a tracking device. To use any of these
features, you must have:

A GPS-enabled phone or a compatible GPS receiver

A calling plan that supports transmission of maps and GPS data

A service plan or software that provides the actual maps and directions or provides
information about the phone's location
Common uses for GPS phones include:

Location Tracking: Some employers use GPS-enabled phones to track their employees'
locations, and some business offer location tracking services for GPS-enabled phones.
The Wherifone locator phone provides GPS coordinates and can dial emergency phone numbers.
Parents and caregivers can track the phone's location by phone or online and can receive
notification if it leaves a designated "safe area." Wearable Environmental Information Networks
of Japan has also introduced the Dog @ Watch, a GPS watch phone for children.

Turn-by-Turn Directions: GPS-enabled phones with view screens can often display
turn-by-turn directions as well as announce them through the phone's speaker. In general,
companies that offer these services charge a monthly fee and use a database of maps to provide
the directions. The services are only as good as their database -- outdated maps can provide
inaccurate directions. Some turn-by-turn direction services include: TeleNav ViaMoto MapQuest
Find Me smart2Go, which requires a separate Bluetooth GPS receiver and a memory
card Destinator SP, which is a software package for smartphones

Outdoor Location Services: Trimble Outdoors offers maps and location-based services
for hiking, mountain biking, geocaching and other outdoor activities.

Other Location-Based Services: Some companies hope to deliver news, coupons,

advertisements and other information to cell phone users based on their location.
Some other GPS-enabled phones include:

Mio A701 Smart Phone

SeveralMotorola phones offered through Sprint/Nextel

Follow the links on the next page for lots more information about cell phones, GPS systems and
related technology.

CAUGHT IN THE ACT AND ENHANCED 911

Not everyone who uses a GPS phone does so with the best intentions. Police easily pinpointed
the location of a teenager in Tennessee who made multiple prank calls to 911 from a GPSenabled phone [ref]. Police also arrested a California man who used a GPS phone to stalk his
former girlfriend by concealing it under the hood of her car [ref].
The United States Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Enhanced 911 (E911)
program requires that all cell phones transmit their phone number and location when dialing
911. The FCC gave phone manufacturers, service providers and PSAPs until the end of 2005 to
comply with this ruling. This is one of the reasons many new telephones have GPS receivers
built in, even if they can't provide turn-by-turn directions.
Although the E911 program can help make sure people get help in an emergency, some people
have raised privacy concerns about the program. In addition, many PSAPs do not yet have the
capability to receive location information from cellular phones.
How GPS Receivers Work
Our ancestors had to go to pretty extreme measures to keep from getting lost. They erected
monumental landmarks, laboriously drafted detailed maps and learned to read the stars in the
night sky.
Things are much, much easier today. For less than $100, you can get a pocket-sized gadget that
will tell you exactly where you are onEarth at any moment. As long as you have a GPS receiver
and a clear view of the sky, you'll never be lost again.
In this article, we'll find out how these handy guides pull off this amazing trick. As we'll see, the
Global Positioning System is vast, expensive and involves a lot of technical ingenuity, but the
fundamental concepts at work are quite simple and intuitive.
When people talk about "a GPS," they usually mean a GPS receiver. The Global Positioning
System (GPS) is actually a constellationof 27 Earth-orbiting satellites (24 in operation and three
extras in case one fails). The U.S. military developed and implemented this satellite network as a
military navigation system, but soon opened it up to everybody else.
Each of these 3,000- to 4,000-pound solar-powered satellites circles the globe at about 12,000
miles (19,300 km), making two complete rotations every day. The orbits are arranged so that at
any time, anywhere on Earth, there are at least four satellites "visible" in the sky.
A GPS receiver's job is to locate four or more of these satellites, figure out the distance to each,
and use this information to deduce its own location. This operation is based on a simple
mathematical principle called trilateration. Trilateration in three-dimensional space can be a
little tricky, so we'll start with an explanation of simple two-dimensional trilateration.

2-D Trilateration

Imagine you are somewhere in the United States and you are TOTALLY lost -- for whatever
reason, you have absolutely no clue where you are. You find a friendly local and ask, "Where am
I?" He says, "You are 625 miles fromBoise, Idaho."
This is a nice, hard fact, but it is not particularly useful by itself. You could be anywhere on a
circle around Boise that has a radius of 625 miles, like this:
You ask somebody else where you are, and she says, "You are 690 miles from Minneapolis,
Minnesota." Now you're getting somewhere. If you combine this information with the Boise
information, you have two circles that intersect. You now know that you must be at one of these
two intersection points, if you are 625 miles from Boise and 690 miles from Minneapolis.

If a third person tells you that you are 615 miles fromTucson, Arizona, you can eliminate one of
the possibilities, because the third circle will only intersect with one of these points. You now
know exactly where you are -- Denver, Colorado.

This same concept works in three-dimensional space, as well, but you're dealing
with spheres instead of circles. In the next section, we'll look at this type of

3-D Trilateration
Fundamentally, three-dimensional trilateration isn't much different from two-dimensional
trilateration, but it's a little trickier to visualize. Imagine the radii from the previous examples
going off in all directions. So instead of a series of circles, you get a series of spheres.
If you know you are 10 miles from satellite A in the sky, you could be anywhere on the surface
of a huge, imaginary sphere with a 10-mile radius. If you also know you are 15 miles from
satellite B, you can overlap the first sphere with another, larger sphere. The spheres intersect in a
perfect circle. If you know the distance to a third satellite, you get a third sphere, which intersects
with this circle at two points.
The Earth itself can act as a fourth sphere -- only one of the two possible points will actually be
on the surface of the planet, so you can eliminate the one in space. Receivers generally look to
four or more satellites, however, to improve accuracy and provide precise altitude information.
In order to make this simple calculation, then, the GPS receiver has to know two things:

The location of at least three satellites above you

The distance between you and each of those satellites

The GPS receiver figures both of these things out by analyzing high-frequency, low-power radio
signals from the GPS satellites. Better units have multiple receivers, so they can pick up signals
from several satellites simultaneously.
Radio waves are electromagnetic energy, which means they travel at the speed of light (about
186,000 miles per second, 300,000 km per second in a vacuum). The receiver can figure out how
far the signal has traveled by timing how long it took the signal to arrive. In the next section,
we'll see how the receiver and satellite work together to make this measurement.

A GPS satellite

GPS Calculations
On the previous page, we saw that a GPS receiver calculates the distance to GPS satellites by
timing a signal's journey from satellite to receiver. As it turns out, this is a fairly elaborate
process.
At a particular time (let's say midnight), the satellite begins transmitting a long, digital pattern
called a pseudo-random code. The receiver begins running the same digital pattern also exactly
at midnight. When the satellite's signal reaches the receiver, its transmission of the pattern will
lag a bit behind the receiver's playing of the pattern.
The length of the delay is equal to the signal's travel time. The receiver multiplies this time by
the speed of light to determine how far the signal traveled. Assuming the signal traveled in a
straight line, this is the distance from receiver to satellite.

In order to make this measurement, the receiver and satellite both need clocks that can be
synchronized down to the nanosecond. To make a satellite positioning system using only
synchronized clocks, you would need to have atomic clocks not only on all the satellites, but also
in the receiver itself. But atomic clocks cost somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000, which
makes them a just a bit too expensive for everyday consumer use.
The Global Positioning System has a clever, effective solution to this problem. Every satellite
contains an expensive atomic clock, but the receiver itself uses an ordinary quartz clock, which it
constantly resets. In a nutshell, the receiver looks at incoming signals from four or more satellites
and gauges its own inaccuracy. In other words, there is only one value for the "current time" that
the receiver can use. The correct time value will cause all of the signals that the receiver is
receiving to align at a single point in space. That time value is the time value held by the atomic
clocks in all of the satellites. So the receiver sets its clock to that time value, and it then has the
same time value that all the atomic clocks in all of the satellites have. The GPS receiver gets
atomic clock accuracy "for free."
When you measure the distance to four located satellites, you can draw four spheres that all
intersect at one point. Three spheres will intersect even if your numbers are way off,
but four spheres will not intersect at one point if you've measured incorrectly. Since the receiver
makes all its distance measurements using its own built-in clock, the distances will all
be proportionally incorrect.
The receiver can easily calculate the necessary adjustment that will cause the four spheres to
intersect at one point. Based on this, it resets its clock to be in sync with the satellite's atomic
clock. The receiver does this constantly whenever it's on, which means it is nearly as accurate as
the expensive atomic clocks in the satellites.
In order for the distance information to be of any use, the receiver also has to know where the
satellites actually are. This isn't particularly difficult because the satellites travel in very high and
predictable orbits. The GPS receiver simply stores an almanac that tells it where every satellite
should be at any given time. Things like the pull of the moon and the sun do change the satellites'
orbits very slightly, but the Department of Defense constantly monitors their exact positions and
transmits any adjustments to all GPS receivers as part of the satellites' signals.
In the next section, we'll look at errors that may occur and see how the GPS receiver corrects
them.

The StreetPilot II, a GPS receiver with built-in maps for drivers
Differential GPS
So far, we've learned how a GPS receiver calculates its position on earth based on the
information it receives from four located satellites. This system works pretty well, but
inaccuracies do pop up. For one thing, this method assumes the radio signals will make their way
through the atmosphere at a consistent speed (the speed of light). In fact, the Earth's atmosphere
slows the electromagnetic energy down somewhat, particularly as it goes through the ionosphere
and troposphere. The delay varies depending on where you are on Earth, which means it's
difficult to accurately factor this into the distance calculations. Problems can also occur when
radio signals bounce off large objects, such as skyscrapers, giving a receiver the impression that
a satellite is farther away than it actually is. On top of all that, satellites sometimes just send out
bad almanac data, misreporting their own position.
Differential GPS (DGPS) helps correct these errors. The basic idea is to gauge GPS inaccuracy
at a stationary receiver station with a known location. Since the DGPS hardware at the station
already knows its own position, it can easily calculate its receiver's inaccuracy. The station then
broadcasts a radio signal to all DGPS-equipped receivers in the area, providing signal correction
information for that area. In general, access to this correction information makes DGPS receivers
much more accurate than ordinary receivers.
The most essential function of a GPS receiver is to pick up the transmissions of at least four
satellites and combine the information in those transmissions with information in an electronic
almanac, all in order to figure out the receiver's position on Earth.
Once the receiver makes this calculation, it can tell you the latitude, longitude and altitude (or
some similar measurement) of its current position. To make the navigation more user-friendly,
most receivers plug this raw data into map files stored in memory.

You can use maps stored in the receiver's memory, connect the receiver to a computer that can
hold more detailed maps in its memory, or simply buy a detailed map of your area and find your
way using the receiver's latitude and longitude readouts. Some receivers let you download
detailed maps into memory or supply detailed maps with plug-in map cartridges.
A standard GPS receiver will not only place you on a map at any particular location, but will also
trace your path across a map as you move. If you leave your receiver on, it can stay in constant
communication with GPS satellites to see how your location is changing. With this information
and its built-in clock, the receiver can give you several pieces of valuable information:

How far you've traveled (odometer)

How long you've been traveling

Your current speed (speedometer)

Your average speed

A "bread crumb" trail showing you exactly where you have traveled on the map

The estimated time of arrival at your destination if you maintain your current speed
1 Distance Between Two Given Points

The shortest distance (the geodesic) between two given points P1=(lat1, lon1)
and P2=(lat2, lon2) on the surface of a sphere with radius R is the great circle distance.
It can be calculated using the formula:
dist = arccos(sin(lat1) sin(lat2) + cos(lat1) cos(lat2)
cos(lon1 - lon2)) R(1)
For example, the distance between the Statue of Liberty at (40.6892,
-74.0444)=(0.7102 rad, -1.2923 rad) and the Eiffel Tower at (48.8583,
2.2945)=(0.8527 rad, 0.0400 rad) assuming a spherical approximationa of the figure
of the Earth with radius R=6371 km is:
dist = arccos(sin(0.7102) sin(0.8527) + cos(0.7102) cos(0.8527)
cos(-1.2923 - 0.0400)) 6371 km
= 5837 km
2Finding Places Within a Distance Without Using an Index

Suppose we want to find places within a distance d=1000 km

from M=(lat, lon)=(1.3963, -0.6981) in a database. Given that we have a table named
Places with columns Lat and Lon that hold the coordinates in radians, then we could
use this SQL query:

SELECT * FROM Places WHERE acos(sin(1.3963) * sin(Lat) + cos(1.3963) *

cos(Lat) * cos(Lon - (-0.6981))) * 6371 <= 1000;

The problem with this query is that our database system will not be able to utilize
indices on the Lat and Lon columns because of the complexity of the formula in the
WHERE clause.

Trilateration
In geometry, trilateration is the process of determining absolute or relative locations of points by
measurement of distances, using the geometry of circles, spheres ortriangles.[1][2][3][4]
In addition to its interest as a geometric problem, trilateration does have practical applications
in surveying and navigation, including global positioning systems (GPS). In contrast totriangulation, it
does not involve the measurement of angles.
In two-dimensional geometry, it is known that if a point lies on two circles, then the circle centers and
the two radii provide sufficient information to narrow the possible locations down to two. Additional
information may narrow the possibilities down to one unique location.
In three-dimensional geometry, when it is known that a point lies on the surfaces of three spheres,
then the centers of the three spheres along with their radii provide sufficient information to narrow
the possible locations down to no more than two (unless the centers lie on a straight line).
This article describes a method for determining the intersections of three sphere surfaces given the
centers and radii of the three spheres.

Derivation[edit]
The intersections of the surfaces of three spheres is found by formulating the equations for the three
sphere surfaces and then solving the three equations for the three unknowns, x, y, and z. To simplify
the calculations, the equations are formulated so that the centers of the spheres are on the z = 0
plane. Also, the formulation is such that one center is at the origin, and one other is on the x-axis. It
is possible to formulate the equations in this manner since any three non-collinear points lie on a
unique plane. After finding the solution, it can be transformed back to the original three
dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.
We start with the equations for the three spheres:

d Is the x coordinate of point P2. You have to subtract it from x to get the length of the
base of the triangle between the intersection and r2 (x, y, z are coordinates, not
lengths).
We need to find a point located at (x, y, z) that satisfies all three equations.
We need to use r1 and r2 to eliminate y and z from the equation and solve for x:

Assuming that the first two spheres intersect in more than

one point, that is that

In this case, substituting the equation for x back into the equation for the first sphere produces the
equation for a circle, the solution to the intersection of the first two spheres:

Substituting
results:

into the formula for the third sphere and solving for y there

Now that the x- and y-coordinates of the solution point are found, the formula can be rearranged for
the first sphere to find the z-coordinate:

Now the solution to all three points x, y and z is found. Because z is expressed as the positive or
negative square root, it is possible for there to be zero, one or two solutions to the problem.
This last part can be visualized as taking the circle found from intersecting the first and second
sphere and intersecting that with the third sphere. If that circle falls entirely outside or inside of the
sphere, z is equal to the square root of a negative number: no real solution exists. If that circle
touches the sphere on exactly one point, z is equal to zero. If that circle touches the surface of the
sphere at two points, then z is equal to plus or minus the square root of a positive number.

Preliminary and final computations

The Derivation section pointed out that the coordinate system in which the sphere centers are
designated must be such that
1. all three centers are in the plane z = 0,
2. the sphere center, P1, is at the origin, and
3. the sphere center, P2, is on the x-axis.
In general the problem will not be given in a form such that these requirements are met.
This problem can be overcome as described below where the points, P1, P2, and P3 are treated as
vectors from the origin where indicated. P1, P2, and P3 are of course expressed in the original
coordinate system.

is the unit vector in the direction from P1 to P2.

is the signed magnitude of the x component, in the figure 1 coordinate
system, of the vector from P1 to P3.

is the unit vector in the y direction. Note that the points P1, P2,
and P3 are all in the z = 0 plane of the figure 1 coordinate system.
The third basis unit vector is

. Therefore,

the distance between the centers P1 and P2 and

is the signed magnitude of the y component, in the figure 1
coordinate system, of the vector from P1 to P3.
Using

and

as computed above, solve for x, y and z as described in the Derivation section.

Then

gives the points in the original coordinate system since

and

, the basis unit vectors, are

expressed in the original coordinate system.

IP6 - Security and Cryptographic Issues

The ultimate goal of IP6 is to address security issues in mobile networks. Security includes
regular attacks on communications (interception, modification, impersonation), denial of services
attacks, privacy issues, and reliability (resistance against malicious parties, routing reliability,
incentives to collaborate, duplication, disaster recovery).

During the last three years, we have been working on several main security and cryptographic
issues in ad hoc networks. We describe below the seven themes that have emerged in IP6.
Location Verification in Wireless Networks
We analyzed position and distance estimation, and encounter registration techniques in
adversarial settings. We showed that most proposed techniques are vulnerable to position and
distance spoofing attacks from dishonest nodes and malicious attackers. We proposed two novel
mechanisms for secure position verification, called Verifiable Multilateration (VM), and
Verifiable Time Difference Of Arrival (VTDOA). VM enables the verification of node positions
with verifiers that are not mutually synchronized, but it requires the active participation of the
claimant node and of the verifiers in localization. VTDOA enables passive verification of node
positions, but it requires synchronization of verifier clocks with the clock of the claimant node.

Figure 1. Verifiable trilateration. Base stations BS1, BS2 and BS3 verify the position of node A in two dimensions;
the base stations verify the position of A if the node is located in the triangle formed by BS1, BS2 and BS3.

We further proposed two mechanisms for node distance verification. These mechanisms are
based on GPS and radar technologies, respectively. The advantage of the GPS-aided distance
estimation is its simplicity, and its drawback is that it offers only probabilistic resilience to
attacks. Radar-aided distance verification is proposed to be used primarily for vehicular distance
verification. The advantage of both techniques is that they do not need to rely on any fixed

infrastructure.
We also analyzed the vulnerabilities of positioning algorithms for wireless multi-hop networks.
We then proposed mechanisms based on verifiable multilateration and on VTDOA, by which
nodes can verify their mutual distances and positions. We further proposed a set of mechanisms
for the detection of node removal, including the detection of node stealing and compromise.
We further proposed SECTOR, a set of mechanisms for the secure verification of the times of
nodes' encounters. These mechanisms enable each network node, or a central authority, to verify
encounters between any pair of nodes. We discussed the application of SECTOR to several
problems, including prevention of the wormhole attacks, securing routing protocols based on last
encounters, as well as cheating detection by means of topology tracking. We built SECTOR on
well-established cryptographic techniques, including hash chains and Merkle hash trees; we
showed how to adapt the protocols to the specific requirements of a given application. We
showed that the overhead of this protocol is very reasonable and we assessed its robustness with
respect to attackers of different degrees of strengths.

Localization based on communication involved between wireless devices (nodes) can be

classified into active and passive techniques. In active techniques, a node has to
Communicate with the neighbors or target for position computation. RADAR introduced
In [16], employs an active method, where a node transmits an electromagnetic signal and detects
the echo signal reflected by target to determine the range. In passive techniques, a node can
determine the position of target, without any communication, but by passively listening to the RF
emissions present in the environment.