In the last 5 years global positioning system (GPS) based solutions have become economical and available for individuals to use in their day to day working. Many different applications and solutions incorporates GPS. One such powerful application is vehicle tracking.

GPS Based Tracking System

There are 2 approaches for GPS based tracking systems, Offline and Online Tracking.

Offline Tracking

This option is more of a path recorder here. This approach records the route of the vehicle. A GPS based unit, embedded inside the vehicle stores the desired parameters (latitude, longitude, speed…etc.) at a fixed (predefined) interval. It is important to note that - as tracking/recording is done by GPS based system - its coverage is 100% and can trace the vehicle's route. And once the vehicle is at the control station, the data from the car can be downloaded on a PC, for analysis.

The downloaded data contains the route, path that the vehicle has traveled. One can generate different kinds of reports and GIS map plots with these data. Map plots makes it easy to visualize the movement of the vehicle. This is an inexpensive approach such that no wireless communications media is required for data transfers.

Online Tracking

This approach is used for real time tracking. The embedded unit in the vehicle acquires the information (latitude, longitude, speed, time… etc.) provided by the GPS and transmits it to the base the station server via a communication link. As soon as the location information is received at the base station server, the software at the server saves the information received and processes it and shows the current location on a GIS map - in real time. But the communication link and the base station with receiving facility make this option expensive.