2019 First International Conference of Computer and Applied Sciences (CAS),

Mustansiriyah University, Education College, Computer Science Department, Baghdad, Iraq

A Smart real-time tracking system using GSM/GPRS

technologies
Ali Mustafa Mohammed I. A al-Nouman Osama A. Awad
College of information engineering College of information engineering College of information engineering
Al-Nahrain University Al-Nahrain University Al-Nahrain University
Baghdad-Iraq Baghdad-Iraq Baghdad-Iraq
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— the cases of kidnapping and vehicle theft is via using GSM/GPRS modem that enables electronic devices
increasing continuously. Therefore the need for mobile to connect to the internet and transmitted data to the remote
applications to track the vehicle in real-time become very server thus reduce the cost of transmission[9][10] [11].
important, so the user can track and monitor the vehicle using
the mobile phone. This type of system sends large data to the
server/cloud every day, which will increase the expenses every II. RELATED WORK
month for transmitting the data to this cloud/server. This paper [3] This paper presents traffic monitoring and vehicle
introduced an embedded system that designed and implemented tracking in real-time for private or public transportation section
for vehicle tracking based on an android application, the main through utilised social networking. The embedded system
contribution of this paper is to reduce the data that sent from the comprises of Arduino UNO, GSM/GPRS SIM900 module,
embedded system in the vehicle to the cloud server via picking SKYLAB GPS module. The embedded system transmits the
only necessary data for vehicle tracking from Global Position information that gets it from a GPS satellite to host server
System GPS and decreasing the number of Hypertext Transfer through the GPRS services over the internet by using GSM.
Protocol HTTP request that transmitted to the cloud server by The coordinates stored and then post it to a social network
construing the transmission of information with the movement of
(Twitter).
vehicles. This system is divided into three parts: embedded
system that is attached with the vehicle, cloud/server part which
[9] Proposed an efficient vehicle tracking system to track
has the database of every single move every car did, and the movements of a vehicle at any time from any location. It
monitoring part which is the main user interface so they can combined two popular technology smartphone (an IOS
monitor the vehicle. application) and Arduino UNO. This embedded system
consists of GPS, GSM/GPRS SM5100B, Arduino UNO is
Keywords— Vehicle tracking; GPS; GSM/GPRS; Android placed inside the vehicle whose position to determine and
application. tracked in real-time. The information about location received
by the GPS receiver and transmitted to a remote server every 8
I. INTRODUCTION seconds by using the (get) method through an HTTP request to
be stored in a database.
The first implementation of vehicle tracking was executed [12] Proposed and implemented secure, real-time and low-
for shipping industry after that the accelerated growth in cost GPS/GSM tracking system and control for vehicle depend
technology an automated vehicle tracking in real-time begins on face detection techniques. The face detection system used
utilised in a variety of ways to track some vehicle emergency, for discovering the driver's face images and getting the images
such as kidnapping, accident, and theft because the need for an by a tiny digital camera which is hidden somewhere in front of
immediate response become more critical issue and finding the the driver's seat in the vehicle cabin. When the owner of the
location is the first action [1][2][3]. vehicle detects that an unauthorised driver theft the vehicle. In
Basic mobile phone users now less prevalent this case, the owner control the vehicle, since the owner can
Smartphone users within the whole population than owners of send SMS messages from android mobile via specific GSM'S
smartphone users, this, force the researcher to focus on card that is defined as the vehicle tracking system.
accelerated growth in smart mobile usage to provide a better [13] Designed and implemented, a smart Anti-theft vehicle
application to meet the requirement of a wide range of users[4]. tracking system depends on the internet of things (IoT) for
The vehicle tracking system usually is designed using monitoring the movement of any vehicle at any time. This
GPS/GSM technology for localisation and data transmission system consists of a special microcontroller (LinkItONE) as
[5]. The coordinates of location and time information at any the main controller, RFID, GSM/GPRS module, GPS sensor,
time and anywhere are provided by using GPS technology. relay, switch, SD cards, Bluetooth 2.1 and 4.0 as well as Wi-Fi.
The first wireless data transmission used GSM and SMS The GPS receiver receives the information about the location
technology using GSM modem, but this way considered costly of the vehicle that attached to, then transmits this information
cause it spends high cost for transmission information in real- to Amazon web-service and then displays it on a smartphone.
time every day[6][7][8]. The second wireless data transmission
utilising the services of GPRS that provide by GSM network

978-1-7281-4048-3/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 169

 2019 First International Conference of Computer and Applied Sciences (CAS),
Mustansiriyah University, Education College, Computer Science Department, Baghdad, Iraq

[14] Proposed design and implementation of a real-time • Fan 12volt, which is used for cooling the embedded
tracking bus and count the number of passengers of the bus of system when the temperature exceeds the threshold
Campus University. Mobile Application is Utilized to detect temperature (33̊).
the current location of the bus by a student. This system
comprises of two embedded systems which attached with a • Relay, which is used to allow a microcontroller with
bus. First one consists of NEO6MGPS module and Arduino low voltage control high voltage to turn ON or OFF the fan.
Uno which implement tracking bus and the second one consists • Two LM2596 DC-DC Converter, one of these step-
of Raspberry PI and webcam which send the information about down modules is used to convert from 12v to 5v to operate the
the counter of passenger via using image processing in the Arduino NANO, and another one is used to convert from 12v
process of detecting the number of people in the bus. to 4v to operate the GSM/GPRS SIM800L, and DHT11
In our proposed paper, we suggest a method to reduce the Sensor.
information that transmits to the cloud server without affecting
the accuracy of the vehicle location and the properties of the B. Software Requirement
real-time for multi-vehicle tracking system. The proposed
• IDE, (integrate development environment) software
system used Smartphone application, heat sensor, Fan, GPS,
for Arduino has been used to write a program and install
and GSM/GPRS to provide better services for tracking and
various libraries for Arduino.
monitoring.
The main requirement of a vehicle tracking system can be • Mocha host, the cloud computing platform which is
summarised in the following points: used for storing the information of the GPS and the
information about the persons and the vehicles. The proposed
A. Hardware Requirement system is using PHPMYADMIN as a type of database and
The hardware components that needed can be summarised manages the database via MYSQL.
as follow. (Fig. 1) • HTML5 and CSS have been used to design the web
application.
• PHP, JavaScript, and JQUERY have been used for the
interface between the web and SQL language.
• Google Maps API, which is used to display the
position of vehicles on Google maps.

C. Practical interface
The proposed system interface can be seen in Fig.1, how the
components in the system are connected. This work has used
NEO 6M GPS module and Arduino NANO as a
microcontroller and SIM800L GSM/GPRS module which is
connected via serial communication with 9600-bit rate and
Fig. 1. practical join in embedded system designed and implemented a DC-to-DC Auto-connecter to
ensure continuous work of the GPS. UBS DC-DC circuit is
• Arduino NANO as microcontroller which can be used to auto-connect, and auto charge backup battery from the
interfaced with a GPS module, GSM/GPRS module and auto- main battery of the vehicle is an ideal way, and it may charge
connecter circuit. the battery with 9A and 12 volts. These interfaces and
procedure of an embedded system are illustrated in Fig. 2.
• GSM SIM800L, which is interfaced with Arduino
NANO and it is used to transmit the data through GPRS to a
remote server.
• NEO 6M GPS module, which is interfaced with
Arduino NANO and it is used to receive coordinates from at
least four satellites.
• UBS DC-DC circuit, which is used to ensure the
electronic components powered ON continuously without
interruption when a malicious person (like a thief) cut wire of
the battery, continues electronic components will work on the
backup battery.
• DHT11 Sensor, which is used to know the
temperature of the embedded system environment to protect
the system from burning at high temperature since when the Fig. 2. The procedure of tracking system
temperature becomes more than or equal 33̊ the fan
automatically turns ON.

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 2019 First International Conference of Computer and Applied Sciences (CAS),
Mustansiriyah University, Education College, Computer Science Department, Baghdad, Iraq

This project can be following simple steps to program the Start

Arduino with AT command as follow:
Give ID
The first part is "void setup" that run only one time at the Select GPS
beginning of the program that used to set up and initiate the Setup DHT11 Coordinates
program.
Assign ID for each agent (GPS) to be utilised in remote Turn off
NO If Temp >= 35
servers to recognise the information of HTTP request of each FAN Modify
Coordinates
Agent. Yes
At the beginning: setup connection between GPS, GPRS, Turn ON FAN
and Arduino with bit rate 9600 b/s. Modify ID
Then check the quality of a signal of GSM via using the Initialize SIM800L and Wait 1s
command ("AT+CSQ"), after that check if there is GPRS GPS
connection GPS ON
After that Setup an access point Name APN via the NO
IF delay>10s &
speed>5 K mph
command ("AT+SAPBR=3, 1, \"CONTYPE\", \"GPRS\"") and GPRS ON
("AT + SAPBR = 3, 1, \"APN\", \"3gprs\""). APN has been NO
used as a gateway to connect to the internet, in the APN was Check Quality of GSM NO Yes
defined user name and password of Network Company.
Then set up and enable in GPS utilizing via the command GPRS Connection
("AT + SAPBR = 1, 1"). If Long. >0 &
Lat. > 0
Fake the ID And coordinates of GPS before sending it to Yes
Yes
a remote server to prevent the attacker from knowing the exact Setup APN Yes
id and coordinates of any vehicle when the attacker listens to
information on the network as illustrates in equation 1 and 2. HTTP Initialization

C=(ID+Key1)*Key2 (1) Send GPS Coordinates

C= Fake ID Wait 1s NO GPS connection

Fake Longitude = longitude + Key3

If GPRS is active
Fake Latitude=latitude + key3 (2) Yes

The second part is the "void loop" that runs all time as long NO
Read GPS Information
as the electronic component turns on. End

Check if there is a GPS signal receives from more than four

Fig. 3. Procedure of transmitter
GPS satellites. After that initiate timer for transmitting the
information of GPS each 10s.
After that parse the NEMA sentences to extract only the III. DATABASE
coordinates of the position and fake the coordinate via add The whole process of the receiver side, database, and how
float variable to it and prepare it to be sent to the MOCHA host it stores the data can be as seen in Fig. 4. In the beginning, it
server. must establish a connection to receive the id, longitude and
latitude from embedded system vis using the GET method. The
Initialise HTTP services via commend ("AT+HTTPINIT"),
filter uses to prevent storing coordinates when the coordinates
this used for transmitting data from Arduino to the server.
are zero to prevent any error accrues when it display on google
To set the parameter for HTTP session a command map. Modify id and coordinates with private equation before
("AT+HTTPPARA=\" URL\", \"http://iraqgpstrack.com/ name stores it in a database, as shown in equation 3 that illustrates
of the database depends on your work?") Has been used. modify id, and equation 4 illustrates modifies coordinates.
Add a condition to the program to prevent GSM/GPRS ID=(C–KEY1)*KEY2 (3)
module for sending coordinates when vehicles stop more than
C = Fake ID
10s in the same place.
Longitude=Fake longitude–KEY3 (4)
Add filter to prevent GSM/GPRS from sending coordinates
when the value of GPS coordinates has been zero since for the Latitude = Fake Latitude – KEY3
first time before the GPS receives data from satellite the
GSM/GPRS module transmits data to a database with a value Agent Table consists of six columns is shown in Table I.
equal to zero. These columns are id, idagent, iduser, vehicleno, photo and
creatAT. idagent contains all ID agent that added by admin; id
Continuous Arduino sends data to the database when as user contains the id of each account, vehiculeno contains the
well as the GSM/GPRS is active. The procedure of the vehicle numbers of all target vehicle, photo column contains
transmitter is illustrating in Fig. 3. the path to photo of the vehicle, createdAT column contains the

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 2019 First International Conference of Computer and Applied Sciences (CAS),
Mustansiriyah University, Education College, Computer Science Department, Baghdad, Iraq

date and time of each account when the admin is added it. This type holds the type of each account since there are two types of
table joins with another table via id and idagent. account; admin account and user account, “createAT” holds the
date and time of each account when it is added.

Start
TABLE II. USER TABLE

Establish Connection
ID Name “Passworduser” “mobileuser” type “creatAt”
4 badr 882baf28143fb 07701122991 admin 2019-05-16
700b388a87ef5 11:05:00
Receive 81a6e5
Tracking Data
5 ali 3861a60523ef8 07717919216 user 2019-05-16
Analyses Data
9a017be166c5b 11:19:00
Identify Device ID 325409

If Long. >0 &

IV. ANDROID APPLICATION
NO
Lat. > 0 The android application was created via using thinkable is a
cross-platform application that converts the file code of the
Yes
web application to APK File format to be able to create an
Discard Data
Modify ID android mobile application via using block code. Fig. 5(a)
Received
displays snap of the in the android application in Huawei nova
Modify 3i. Since this Figure displays the login page and the content of
Coordinates each icon in track vehicle. Fig. 5(b) displays snap for the result
Store
of a proposed system when retrieves the tracking information
Coordinates of a vehicle that has ID =700 at the same period in which
retrieve the tracking information on the web application as
End shows in Fig. 6. This process ensures that mobile application is
operated correctly without any damage and at last show, the
Fig. 4. Flowchart of the receiver side setting parameters for admin in with the admin can able to
manage (delete, edit, update) the account of users and agent
Tracking Table consists of five columns as shown in and also provide the ability for tracking, monitoring and
Table I. These columns are (idtrack) that holds the auto- retrieve the tracking information of any vehicle via specify the
increment number for each coordinate storing in this table, id of the target vehicle and also the period that wanted to
(idagent) holds the Id of GPS that sent from embedded system, retrieve... This method of mobile application does not need to
LAT column is abbreviation of latitude that holds the latitude purchase another API key from Google and based on the same
of each coordinate, LNG column is abbreviation of longitude API key of web application and also enables the same file code
that holds the longitude of each coordinate, (creatAT) column of APK to operate on IOS application.
holds the date and time of arrival of each coordinate to
database.

TABLE I. AGENT TABLE

User Table consists of seven columns as shows table II.

These columns are (iduser) that holds the id of each account,
the username column holds the user name of the driver.
(Emailuser) column holds the email of each driver, (a)
(passworduser) hold the encrypt password associated with each
account, mobile user holds the phone number of each driver,

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 2019 First International Conference of Computer and Applied Sciences (CAS),
Mustansiriyah University, Education College, Computer Science Department, Baghdad, Iraq

Start

Embed Google MAP on

site

Define MAP and Register

Key

Retrive
Longitude and
Latitude

Convert to XML file

Display Last If New

Location on NO Coordinates Wait 10s
(b) MAP Available

Fig. 5. Vehicle tracking system test YES

Display Locations

End

Fig. 7. Android application flowchart

V. DATA SIZE
The data size of a vehicle tracking system reduced via
transmitted only 22byte; longitude (8byte), latitude (8byte) and
ID (4byte) of a vehicle for the remote server and used the date
and time of server by adjusting the time of server on the time
of Iraq UTC+3. Fig. 8 shows comparison among the proposed
system data size in green strip with other real-time system data
size in 2016[10] in pink strip and 2013[11] in blue strip
through time-based on the movement and time of stopped of
vehicles since each hour the time stop is increased about 5s and
Fig. 6. Result of web application the results is calculating and comparing according to this time.
The data size of a proposed system decreases with increases in
Figure 7 shows the flowchart of an Android application. the duration of vehicle stops without movement for more than
The Real-Time tracks available every 10s the coordinates 10s.
display om a Map when The vehicle moves from location to
another. Last coordinates displayed on Map when the
coordinates did not change and when there are no new
coordinates available in a database.

Fig. 8. Comparing data size

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 2019 First International Conference of Computer and Applied Sciences (CAS),
Mustansiriyah University, Education College, Computer Science Department, Baghdad, Iraq

VI. RESULT request and the number of HTTP request that embedded
The result of this work calculated as the average of the system makes it every minute. The reliability and dependability
transmitted HTTP request per minute is 3.88 coordinate/minute of this system based on reliability and dependability of internet.
for normal system., but when applying our rule for the The position accuracy depends on the type of GPS module.
program, the mean of transmitted the HTTP request/minute This system uses GPS with accuracy approximately 2.5 m and
will change to 1.65 HTTP request/ minutes. The results of the the number of HTTP request that send every minute. Using
proposed system are compared with other systems [10] [11], as android application become more familiar for the user to track
shown in Fig. 9. The blue one represents the proposed system vehicle than web application because using mobile easier and
result faster to use than using a computer and available anywhere at
any time.

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