cell phone antenna signal
cell phone antenna signal
In mobile phone tracking, why is it not possible to triangulate between cell antenna?
Given that signal strength is measured, is it not possible to measure signal strength to a number of cell antenna and triangulate position based on that? If not, why not?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking
the reason is because the cell phone can only physically communicate with one cell site at a time.
to do a triangulation, you would need the phone to send its position to three different cell sites, and then calculate its position based on that.
doing this would require the phone to know how to disconnect itself from a cell site that it has full service from. that is kind of counter-intuitive for a cellphone.
the guy who answered after me is a little confused abotu what the original iphone does…it uses location based services to tell you where you are NEAR. It does ti by connecting to the ONE cell site you are connected to, and then estimating where you are at, knowing you have to be witihin a certain distance from that tower. It shows a dot where the cell site is at, and then a ring around it showing where you might be. Its similar to triangulation, but not nearly as accurate.