Design and implementation of vehicle tracking system using GPS/GSM/GPRS technology and smartphone application

An efficient vehicle tracking system is designed and implemented for tracking the movement of any equipped vehicle from any location at any time. The proposed system made good use of a popular technology that combines a Smartphone application with a microcontroller. This will be easy to make and inexpensive compared to others. The designed in-vehicle device works using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Global system for mobile communication / General Packet Radio Service (GSM/GPRS) technology that is one of the most common ways for vehicle tracking. The device is embedded inside a vehicle whose position is to be determined and tracked in real-time. A microcontroller is used to control the GPS and GSM/GPRS modules. The vehicle tracking system uses the GPS module to get geographic coordinates at regular time intervals. The GSM/GPRS module is used to transmit and update the vehicle location to a database. A Smartphone application is also developed for continuously monitoring the vehicle location. The Google Maps API is used to display the vehicle on the map in the Smartphone application. Thus, users will be able to continuously monitor a moving vehicle on demand using the Smartphone application and determine the estimated distance and time for the vehicle to arrive at a given destination. In order to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the system, this paper presents experimental results of the vehicle tracking system and some experiences on practical implementations.