Ruchika Gupta and

BVR Reddy
This paper proposes a cost effective method of tracking a human's mobility using two technologies viz
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Global Positioning System (GPS). The whole system allows
the user's mobility to be tracked using a mobile phone which is equipped with an internal GPS receiver
and a GPRS transmitter. A mobile phone application has been developed and deployed on an Android
Phone whose responsibility is to track the GPS location and send it to a remote location by creating a
GPRS packet. As unique identifier we have used mobile's Irnational Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI)
number which will be sent along with the coordinates. The person's position is further saved in a Mobile
Object Database (MOD) for live tracking which is created in MySQL. From MOD the data will be first
transferred into an XML file which will be fed as an input to a web application which is developed with
JavaScript Ajax based Google Map API integrated into it which will be responsible for the showing the
current location of the mobile phone. Most of the applications developed so far use a handheld GPS
receiver device for tracking the location, but we have reduced the cost of device by using the mobile
phone which has an inbuilt GPS receiver. And further the cost is reduced by using GPRS rather than
using Short Message Service (SMS) for communicating the information to the server.
Key Wor ds: GPS, GPRS, MOD, Aj ax, XML, Google API .
GPS and GPRS Based Cost Effective Human
Tracking System Using Mobile Phones
Introduction is a satellite based service which is available 24X7
everywhere in the whole world. GPS system can be
A wide range of tracking systems has been
used to get location which includes details like
developed so far tracking vehicles and displaying
latitude, longitude and altitude values along with
their position on a map, but none of the
the timestamp details etc. it a free of cost service
applications has been developed so far which tracks
available to every individual. In order to track the
the mobility of a human being. Now a day's tracking
movement of the person we have used Google Maps
a person's mobility has became a crucial issue these
for mapping the location sent by the mobile phone.
days be it tracking a criminal came on payroll or a
The mobile phone which fetches the GPS location
detective going to detect a case or any other utility.
communicates with the server using General
The overall objective of this research is to develop a
Packet Radio Service (GPRS). This service is a low
system which is cost effective and can be used for
cost service provided by the service providers
tracking a human being using a GPS and GPRS
which is a wireless data communication system.
equipped mobile phone rather than using a
Mobile phones equipped with GPS receiver are
handheld GPS receiver.
easily available in the market these days and is a
booming technology these days. This cell phone
The main focus of our research is to reduce the
technology has enabled us to communicate almost
overall cost of tracking based on GPS system which
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every part of the world across the boundaries. The both GPS receiver and GPRS transmitter which will
GSM/GPRS is one of the best and cheapest modes use the GSM network to transmit the GPRS
of communication present these days and in future. packets. On this phone itself we'll install our
application which is supposed to perform all the
System Overview
operations of the first phase that is tracking phase.
Fig. 1: Overall Description of the System
Fig 2: Snapshot of Mobile Application after
Installation on the Android based Phone
The system proposed in this paper works in two
phases: tracking phase and mapping phase as
As soon as the application on the phone is started is
shown in the figure 1 above. In the tracking phase
asks a Username and Password from the mobile
the mobile device's application developed in
phone user which needs to given by the user as
Android using the mobile phone GPS receiver
displayed in Figure 2.
fetches the GPS location, after calculating the exact
location it further creates a GPRS packet which Fig 3: Snapshot of the Mobile Application
includes the along with the location details a running on the Android based Mobile
unique identifier called International Mobile Phone which prompts for Username and
Equipment Identity (IMEI) number and Password
timestamp details. The same application later
sends this GPRS packet to the server which stores
the data in a Mobile Object Database (MOD)
developed in MySQL. The next phase is mapping
phase in which the data is fetched from the
database and is displayed on the Google map on the
web application developed in JavaScript based
Ajax technology for live tracking.
Mobile Application
Specifications
The user as soon as enters the Username and
Password it is checked for its validity whether it's
We need a GPS receiver enabled Android Mobile
authentic or not, if it is non authenticated then the
phone for receiving the GPS data from the satellite.
user is prompted with a message of wrong
There are a wide range of such mobiles are easily
username or password as displayed in Figure 3.
available in the market. This mobile will act as a
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January-June 2011 Volume 2 No. 1
Fig 4: Snapshot of the Mobile Application developed in MySQL. The database which we are
running on the Android based Mobile going to use in our application is named as
Phone which prompts for wrong Username TRACKER. It contains two tables namely: Users
and Password. and Location. The figure 6 below displays the users
table which contains the information about only
one user. The fields are ID, NAME, EMAIL,
PHONE_NO, and PASSWORD.
Fig 6: Displays the details of the users table
which contains the details of the users
Once the mobile application successfully logins it
goes into the background and starts fetching the
GPS coordinates of the mobile.
Fig 5: Snapshot of the Mobile Application
There is another table which contains the
running on the Android based Mobile
information about the Location as sent by the
Phone which prompts for Successful Login.
mobile application, whose detail about the columns
is displayed in the Figure 7.
Fig 7: Description of Location table
The mobile application will work in two modes:
The contents of the table LOCATION is displayed
1) Activity (the visible portion of application): this
in the figure 13 below.
will ask user to enter his username and
password and start the tracker service button.
Fig 8: Details of Location table
2) Service: This will run in background and send
location data to server along with username
and password.
Database Specifications
The database which is going to store the
coordinates sent by the mobile application is
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January-June 2011 Volume 2 No. 1
Web Application Specifications This will work as follows
1) The data send by mobile client will be stored in
This application will provide user interface to user:
database(MySQL)
1) Register with a username and password (this
2) Google map service provide us the ability to plot
username and password will also be used with
location coordinates using their JavaScript
mobile client so that user specific data can be
based Ajax API
stored)(a jsp page send request to a servlet)
Fig 11: Snapshot of the XML file which is
Fig 9: Snapshot of the Map Application
generat ed dynami cal l y t o get t he
which prompts the user for New User
coordinates.
SignUp
3) The coordinate data will be provided in form on
xml file which will be generated on the fly based
2) Login with the username and password created
upon the logged in user.
above : after logging in the user can see his
4) This xml will be parsed by Google's JavaScript
travel details(location details) on a Google
API to plot on the map
map and by clicking on the plotted points he
can get more details about that point (extra Database JSP(page that will generate XML based
details) (a jap page send request to a servlet) upon logged in user) this page will be used in user's
welcome page that have all the Google map
Fig 10: Snapshot of the Map Application this
implementation code to plot on map(this is also a
prompts the user for Login
jsp page) which will display the location in four
views : MAPS, SATELITE, HYBRID and EARTH
which is displayed in the figure 12 to 15.
Fig 12: MAP View.
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GPS receiver and GPRS transmitter.
Fig 13: Google Earth View
Instead of using costly SMS system for sending the
information to the server, we have used GPRS for
that purpose. The SMS based systems are neither
efficient nor they are cost effective. Most of the
service providers provide a cheaper GPRS in
around 1 paisa/1KB as compared to SMS whose
cost ranges from 50paisa to 1 Rupee per SMS.
I n order t o reduce t he cost of usi ng
GSM/GPRS/GPS using separate devices, we have
Fig 14: Satellite View
used a mobile phone which contains all the
facilities and can be used very easily with a mobile
application.
Related Work
Many researchers have tried various methods of
object tracking using GPS technology. Most of the
researches defined below can be used for Object
Tracking whether that object is a Vehicle, a person
or anything. Some of the research work which has
Fig 15: Hybrid View
been done this field is abstracted below:
Khondker Shajadul Hasan, Mashiur Rahman,
Abdul L. Haque, M. Abdur Rahman, Tanzil
Rahman and M. Mahbubur Rashed [1] have
proposed a cost effective method of object tracking
using GPS and GPRS technology. The user can view
the present location of the object as well as the past
history of its movement using Google Map and
Internet. The system that is proposed reads the
Discussion on Low Cost Factor
current position of the GPS device and after adding
few mode details like IMEI number a GPRS packet
We have put our best effort to reduce the total cost
is created and transmitted through GSM network
of the system including the device and services. We
to the web server and is displayed on a Google map
have used available resource i.e. our mobile phone
at the web application. This paper presents cost
which is any usual Android based mobile phone
effectiveness in terms of the cost that was earlier
which has GPS and GPRS facility. By using free
spent in sending the coordinates to the web server
Google API we have drastically reduced the cost of
using Short Message Server (SMS); in this paper
the services. This system which is presented in the
they have presented the idea of using GPRS for the
paper can be used by any person who has a mobile
transmission of coordinates rather than the SMS
phone. A high cost GPS receiver's requirement has
service. The cost of sending an SMS is around 50
been eliminated by using mobile phone as both
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January-June 2011 Volume 2 No. 1
paisa to 1 Rupee per SMS, but using GPRS the cost Using this NMEA data only the GPRS Server
comes out to be 2 paisa/KB. fetches the necessary data such as Latitude and
Longitude coordinates which represent the
Gannan Yuan, Zhi Zhang and Wei ShangGuan [2]
location of the vehicle which can be directly
have proposed a GIS based Vehicle Tracking
displayed on the map. The second phase namely
System which uses a GPS data is transmitted
Communication phase is responsible for making
through GPRS by a GPS device placed within each
connection with the GSM modems, fetching the
vehicle which transmits the current GPS location at
GPRS packets and performing some processing
a constant rate of 2 mins to the database server
and data management, which is further inserted in
called the Command Centre. Each vehicle is called a
the database. The third and the last phase namely
Data Terminal transmits the Latitude, Longitude,
Map phase is responsible for fetching the
speed and time information to the command centre
coordinates stored in the database and displays
by making a GPRS packet of the information
them on a GIS based map. In this paper Dijkastra's
gathered along with a unique identifier such as
algorithm is used to find out the minimum cost
number plate etc. VMS presented in this paper can
from sources to destination. Further Kruskal's
display information of more than one vehicle at a
algorithm is used to find out the minimum path
single instance of time on a single map and if the
spanning tree.
number of vehicle increases then it provides a
multi-window environment which can be used by Katina Michael, Andrew McNamee, M.G. Michael
creating a group of vehicles and only participant and Holly Tootell[4] presented a paper on location
group of vehicles will be displayed per window. The based intelligence in which they did an
frequency at which the data is sent to the Command observational study of a GIS based tracking system
Centre is by default 2 mins but can be changeable done on a person whose movements were tracked
and can be changed by the Data Terminal. Along by a GPS device which he carried for 2 weeks with
with the basic object tracking this paper has also him 24x7. The participant of the study handheld a
presented an alarming system which will send the GPS receiver which transmits the location of the
alarms to the Command Centre at the time of theft device after every 3 seconds to the GIS database for
or accident or any other emergency. storage. After each day the data was dumped
because the size of the database was increasing
O. Aloquili, A. Elbanna and A. Al-Azizi [3] proposed
hugely. During the study it was observed that the
an Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) Tracking
device due to its misplacement suffered from signal
System based on GIS, GPRS and GPS technology.
dropouts and some miscalculations in the speed
The AVL proposed in this paper basically works on
was also observed. It was also observed that with
3 phases namely Management, Communication
the new set of batteries the device responded in a
and Map phase. The first phase i.e. Management
better way as compared to the older batteries. GPS
phase basically deals with the organizing the
may prove very beneficial in knowing about the
information such as drivers, or the data received
details of the accidents that took place like the
from the vehicle's GPS/GPRS modem or the GIS
details that was responsible for the accident etc.
data. In the same phase user is allowed to add/
One of the major drawback that was faced during
delete/ edit the information of the drivers, and can
the study was GPS is an outdoor tracking system,
track the driver accordingly. The National Marine
which fails indoor.
Electronics Association (NMEA) data is sent to the
server by the GPRS/GPS modem at a constant rate. Fengli Zhang, Xinggao He, Bo Xu and Minglin
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January-June 2011 Volume 2 No. 1
Prof BVR Reddy is Dean USIT at Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. The author can be
reached at [email protected]
Ruchika Gupta has submitted her M.Tech dissertation at USIT, GGSIPU. The author can be reached at
[email protected]
Deng [5] presented an overview of how a Web Object Tracking System, Proceedings of
Application fetches and integrates the moving International Multiconference of Engineers
object data stored in a database. It is pre assumed and Computer Scientists, March 2009, Vol-I.
that the MOD (Mobile Object Data) is fetched and
2. Yuan, G., Zhang, Z. and Wei Shang Guan,
stored from the object through a GPS enabled
(2008), Research and Design of GIS in
mobile object which could be a taxi, tanker,
Vehi cl e Moni t or i ng Syst em, I EEE
airplanes etc. It is the responsibility of these objects
International on Internet Computing in
to populate the MOD with the required data so that
Science and Engineering.
can be used by a GIS based Web Application for
3. Aloquili, O., Elbanna, A. and Al-Azizi, A.,
displaying its position. The MOD will be updated by
Automatic Vehicle Location Tracking System
the GPS after every one or two seconds. The Web
Based on GIS Environment, IET Software,
Application thus developed for getting the GIS data
2009, 3.4, pp. 255-263.
stored in the MOD database is fetched at a constant
rate and thus displays the updated location as
4. Michael, K., Mcnamee, A., Michael, M. G. and
described by the MOD database.
Tootell, H. , (2006), Location-Based
Intelligence-Modeling Behavior in Humans
Conclusion and Future Scope
Using GPS, Proceedings of IEEE.
This paper presents a low cost human tracking
5. Fengli Zhang, Xinggao He, Bo Xu, and Minglin
system using GPRS GPS on GSM network. The
Deng, Integrating Moving Objects Location
combination of both the technologies i.e. GPS and
Data with GIS-Based Web Environment.
GPRS provides a constant, continuous and real
6. Al-Bayari and Sadoun, O. B., (2005), New
time human tracking system. The cost of the overall
Centralized Automatic Vehicle Location
system has been reduced by two facts one is using
Communications Software System under GIS
the existing mobile phone and another is using
Environment, International Journal of
GPRS instead SMS. It has been hoped that the use
Communication Systems, 18.9, pp. 833-846.
of the overall system can eliminate the requirement
of first the traditional GPS receivers and second
7. Tamil, E. M., Salch, D. B and Idris M. Y. I.,
costly SMS based tracking systems.
(2007), A Mobile Vehicle Tracking System
with GPS/GSM Technology, Proceedings of
The future scope of such system is that it is Android
the 5th Student Conference on Research and
based tracking system, and the same application
Development (SCORED), Permala Bangi,
can be developed for other phones as well such as
Malaysia, May 2007.
Symbian, Blackberry etc.
8. Br ahi m G. and Lui gi L. , ( 2000) ,
References
Understanding GPRS: The GSM Packet Radio
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M., (2009), Cost Effective GPS-GPRS Based
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