Vehicle Trackers

Applications
Title	Vehicle Trackers
Author(s)	GMV
Level	Basic
Year of Publication	2011

Vehicle Trackers are devices attached to the vehicle that track the vehicle position usually for monitoring purposes. These devices can be used for different purposes such as logistics, theft prevention or recovery, emergency services, tolling and driver behavior monitoring. Besides these applications that require little interaction with the driver these device can be connected to other systems in the vehicle. It is common that these systems can connect to other vehicle sensors in order to be able to collect additional vehicle information. Some of these device can also connect to systems such as the communication and entertainment systems to provide positioning for interactive services such as navigation.

These devices can be passive when wide area communications are not supported and the data collected in the device is analyzed at the end of the trip. Usually these devices are active and incorporate wide area communications that is used to send the collected information to a central server or service.

Product Description

Vehicle Trackers consist usually in a box that can be tamper resistant and that is installed permanently in the vehicle. It is connected to the vehicle power supply although some device might have an internal battery that would allow them to continue to operate for a period of time after being disconnected from the vehicle power.

The main component of the device is the GNSS receiver that is connected to an external antenna that is also installed permanently in the vehicle. These device incorporate also some processing and storage capability. The storage is normally used to keep a log of the collected information. In passive devices that only support wired connections or short-range wireless connections (such as Bluetooth, Wi-fi, DSRC) the upload of these logs is the only way to access the collected information.

Usually these devices have wide area communication capability (usually cellular network communications) either integrated in device or accessed through the in-car communication system. Wide area communication can be used to send the position of the vehicle to a central server or service. This action can be done periodically, by user action (e.g. use panic button), upon the detection of specific conditions (e.g. airbag activation, geofencing events) or on demand from a central server or service.

The road personal navigation devices are a singular type of navigation products, because the navigation is driven by computer software which indicates turn-by-turn directions to the user, in order to achieve a chosen destination. Most of the current systems have voice incorporated and are able to provide precise information, without causing distractions to the driver.

Any driver is capable to use these devices without any special training, skills or qualifications, due to a high investment in interactive user-centric interfaces and usability studies. This fact, aligned with a significant price decreasing in recent years, will conduct to a dissemination of these products among the general public.

The main competitors of PNDs are in-vehicle navigation systems and GNSS phones running road navigation applications.

When compared to in-vehicle nav systems, PNDs have the advantage of normally being cheaper, portable, universal and more easily upgradable or substituted but lack the integration possibilities that in-vehicle systems have.

GNSS phone on the other hand are more versatile and concentrate several function in a single device but since PNDs are dedicated products the screens and its usability are normally better that in GNSS phone.

The applications for which GNSS phones are used are considered as non-critical applications.

The accuracy required by these applications is low. The current accuracy provided by civilian GPS is enough for these applications.