Vehicles can be tracked by various electronic technologies. Most popular Vehicle tracking solutions are,
- Vehicle Tracking using Global Positioning System (GPS)
- Vehicle Tracking using RFID
- Mobile phone based Tracking.
Above solutions are completely different and offer different benefits.
Global Positioning System (GPS)
Global Positioning System is a global navigation system. GPS receivers receive signal from GPS satellites and calculate their position. GPS satellites broadcast data and their signals are available for everyone across the world , free of cost. Using GPS receiver, one can find out their Longitude and Latitude position anywhere in the world.
- GPS receiver will work well only when it is in open space, exposed to sky, so that it can receive signal from satellites. It don't work inside buildings.
- In open space, It will work anywhere in the world.
- GPS receiver just finds out current Location and displays it to local user. It don't transmit anything back to satellite. If a vehicle need to be monitored from fixed control room, the current location should be transmitted to the control room using some other technology. Usually GPRS is used to transmit the location to the control room. Other way to explain this technology in simpler way is, “Usually a mobile phone module is attached to GPS module for data communication. For every an seconds, the location generated by GPS is sent to control room as SMS through mobile module.”
- For Real time tracking , since we need a GPS+GPRS combo , it always incur some runtime cost (for GPRS data usage).
- Since Real time tracking , relies on mobile phone module, tracking may fail, if vehicle moves out of mobile phone coverage. In such case, GPS module will continue to generate location information, but it can't be sent to control room.
- GPS Location accuracy is around 5 meters.
Comparison of GPS & RFID Vehicle Tracking
| GPS based Tracking |
RFID based Tracking |
| Global Coverage |
Coverage is limited to Reader's range. |
| Cost per Vehicle Very High |
Cost per Vehicle is very low (Passive RFID). |
| Runtime cost is involved (for real time tracking) |
No Runtime cost. |
| Suitable for tracking vehicles anywhere in the country/world. |
Suitable for tracking vehicles inside a campus. Also Suitable for tracking vehicles at some critical points. |
| Suitable if number of vehicles are less. |
Suitable if number of vehicles are high (if tracking at critical points is enough.) |
Example Project: Taxi Fleet
Management where taxi's location is transmitted to control room in real time. |
Example Project: Toll collection
where vehicles are identified at entry/exit and billed correctly. |
Example Project: Logistics Vehicle Management Where Vehicle location is transmitted to control room in real time. |
Example Project : Parking / Vehicle Authentication
Where Vehicles are identified at entry/exit. |
| Example Project: Passenger Bus Tracking – Vehicle departure and arrival timings are recorded at every stop. |
Mobile Phone Tracking
In this technology, Mobile phone transmit data about their nearest signal towers to the Control Room. From the data about the signal towers, the position of mobile phone is calculated. This technology is growing popular, because of its simplicity and increase in number of signal towers. Location accuracy depends on number of towers nearby. But in sub-urban areas, the location accuracy drops to even 500m, due to lack of signal towers. This technology is seldom used for vehicle tracking.
 Click here to download the Vehicle Tracking brochures . |
