Car Tracking Explained

Car tracking has grown substantially in recent years, more companies are purchasing these systems in an effort to improve their fleet management and make their business more profitable. Car tracking systems are able to deliver unrivalled benefits that include substantial fuel savings, improved customer service and increased vehicle security. These systems use the latest technologies to deliver a reliable and highly accurate service to its customers, but how does it work?

Car tracking systems require a device to be installed into a vehicle. The tracking device is hardwired to a vehicle and a standard 3 wire tracking device only requires a live, neutral and ignition connection. Tracking devices rely on a GPS antenna which can either be integral to the device or may be installed externally for certain vehicles. These antennas continually receive transmissions from GPS satellites that are orbiting the Earth to accurately calculate its real time global position; tracking devices also use the GPS data to calculate their speed and direction of travel. This data is then sent back to the customer at regular intervals (most commonly once every sixty seconds but many tracking systems allow the customer to specify) using the mobile phone GPRS network.

The tracking data is received by the supplier’s servers from the in-vehicle devices and the information is then made available to the end user via the internet.