Low Cost Vehicle Location and Tracking Using GPS

Alison Brown

Abstract:	GPS has attracted a lot of interest for use in vehicle tracking, and a number of manufacturers are currently developing and testing GPS-based systems. However, operating GPS in an urban environment can result in significant performance degradation due to poor satellite visibility. To solve this problem, GPS receivers are being integrated with other sensors to provide aiding data. The disadvantage of this approach Is the increase in equipment cost and complexity. In this paper a low cost GPS tracking system is described that uses an alternative approach. The system includes a low cost vehicle sensor, the TIDGET’, developed by NAVSYS, and a PC-based workstation which is located at the customer’s facility. The workstation includes aiding software developed by NAVSYS that allows the vehicle’s location to be computed even when only two GPS satellites are visible. This provides reliable GPS service even in an- urban environment. The cost of the TIDGETN sensor has been significantly reduced over a conventional GPS receiver by eliminating non-essential functions for the vehicle tracking application. In quantities, the material cost for the TIDGET” is less than $100. The low cost of the vehicle sensor, combined with the ability of the workstation to compute an aided solution in an urban environment, will make this system attractive. for a wide variety of commercial and military vehicle location and tracking applications.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1992) June 29 - 1, 1992 ANA Westin Hotel Dayton, OH
Pages:	197 - 206
Cite this article:	Brown, Alison, "Low Cost Vehicle Location and Tracking Using GPS," Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1992), Dayton, OH, June 1992, pp. 197-206.
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