Tracking your vehicle via GPS or GLONASS is an easy, affordable, and widely available method of protecting your investment from theft. The practice involves placing small, portable devices into vehicles, that allow rental car companies, parents, and car owners the ability to monitor and track that cars via an app, email message, or SMS. Vehicle tracking systems are commonly used by fleet operators for fleet management functions such as fleet tracking, routing, dispatching, on-board information and security. They're also heavily used by urban transit agencies to ensure that buses and trains are running on time, and to trigger certain automated routes, displays, and recordings. Vehicle tracking systems are also popular in consumer vehicles as a theft prevention, monitoring and retrieval device. Police can simply follow the signal emitted by the tracking system and locate the stolen vehicle, making an otherwise stressful event relatively hassle-free.
Initially developed by the US Department of Defense for military use, GPS technology was made available to civilians by President Reagan in 1983 after 269 passengers and crew died on a Korean airliner that was shot down when it strayed off course into Russian airspace. GPS uses microwave signals bounced off from a network of 24 satellites in space to pinpoint and transmit a vehicle's location, instantaneous speed, and direction of travel to a user. More advanced GPS models also allow users to set up real-time alerts to go off whenever a driver speeds or deviates from a specific area.
The system works on a process called trilateration, where three GPS satellites work in tandem to determine the physical location of a car. Once the position is triangulated or locked in, a GPS tracker then uses the same technology that a mobile phone does to make calls or send messages, to broadcast its location to an app or as an SMS with a link or coordinates. Some GPS trackers even require a SIM card with credit and cell service, similar to a mobile phone, so that they can transmit SMSs to a predetermined mobile phone assigned to the car.
GPS tracking is extremely useful in case of a theft, and allow the user to provide local authorities with an exact location of their vehicle. They're also useful to remotely monitor young, novice drivers and ensure that they are safe and well within speed limits at all times. For rental car and transportation companies or businesses that own a large fleet of vehicles, GPS is a vital tool to helping business owners keep tabs on where their vehicles are, coordinate daily operations, and track mileage and use for accounting purposes.
GPS trackers work by plugging into the car's onboard diagnostics (OBD-II) connector usually located under the dash near the driver’s legs, into a cigarette lighter holder, or are battery-powered. The former enables trackers to get power directly from the diagnostic connector, so they’re extremely easy to use. Ones that plug into the car's cigarette lighter holder are equally easy to install and use, but some continue to draw power from your battery when you aren't driving, and may result in your battery dying if left plugged in. Battery powered GPS trackers are by far the most discrete method of installation. The independence allows them to be installed virtually anywhere in the car, and avoid detection. However, the downside is that they need to be routinely taken out and charged or have their batteries replaced in order to work continuously.
Technology aside, GPS tracking exists in two forms - passing and active. Passive devices store GPS location, speed, heading and sometimes a trigger event such as key on/off, door open/closed. Once the vehicle returns to a predetermined point, the device is removed and the data downloaded to a computer for evaluation. Passive systems include auto download type that transfer data via wireless download. Active devices also collect the same information but usually transmit the data in near-real-time via cellular or satellite networks to a computer or data center for evaluation. Most modern vehicle tracking devices combine both active and passive tracking abilities: when a cellular network is available and a tracking device is connected it transmits data to a server; when a network is not available the device stores data in internal memory and will transmit stored data to the server later when the network becomes available again.