Vehicle GPS Tracking Device and Navigation Systems

Since the first generation GPS chip was presented to the public, it overcomes some problems: unclear signal of ex-chip, long positioning time, location drifting, etc. Due to the progress of chip manufacturing procedure and size reduction, even PDA, digital camera, cell phone and so on can be integrated with GPS. The personal vehicle tracking devices equipped on the vehicles is simple and more accuracy than dead reckoning method. It is getting to be used as basic vehicle equipment. Conversely, some disadvantages of GPS still need to be addressed. For example, if a cell phone or radio’s wave band is closed to GPS’, it would cause interference. In addition, tunnels and weather would affect the accuracy of GPS also. Thus, adjusting GPS error by a fixed base station and then conveying it to the vehicles’ GPS for correcting can add accuracy. It is called Differential GPS (namely D-GPS). The FM radio can also receive the positioning signal from the base station.

Vehicle Tracking

The GPS device is easy to be carried and easy to be integrated with other systems. Moreover, due to the common used and free charge of using GPS, the vehicle position can be opened another different applications, e.g., the vehicle tracking,the transportation online information, etc. The vehicle tracking issue is a vehicle equipped with GPS and has the capability to report its coordinates to a computer periodically. A user can trace the target vehicle’s position through the Internet. Similarly, more and more new applications of vehicle tracking are being created, for example, a remote alarm system, transportation tracking, etc.

Wireless GPS for car

Basically, the model of the GPS tracking device for cars can be divided into two parts: the position dispatch end and the reception end. In the position dispatch end, the GPS tracker devices continuously receives the satellite signal and then locates the vehicle’s position. Meanwhile, the coordinates can be dispatched to the Internet through the wireless network base stations. The position reception end can receive and match the coordinates from the Internet and pass current position to the digital map. Finally, the date can be shown on the screen.

Map Matching

The vehicle positioning system is different from the airplane and ship positioning systems. The reason is that the vehicle movement tracks must on roads. Recently, maps have already been digitized; thus, the error between digital maps and movement tracks can be corrected by computers. As a result, a more accurate position can be resulted. The most driving purpose is to traverse to the destination safely, efficiently, and comfortably. Two types of approaches could achieve the goals, including the static and dynamic approaches. In the static aspect, vehicles use the static road and traffic information to navigate. Conversely, in the dynamic aspect, vehicles adopt the dynamic information instead. However, both of the two approaches first require getting the vehicle’s location and then map the position on an e-map. Thus, this chapter first introduces some important vehicle location determination algorithms: the dead reckoning and vehicle GPS locator , in which the precision of location technologies are compared. Then, the map matching algorithm is described in detail. Finally, various vehicle navigation approaches are detailed, in which the important topics include: the navigation architecture, the navigation routing algorithm, and navigation applications.